Epsilon Delta
Jedi Master
Interesting first step, but it doesn't tackle the root of the problem and it doesn't do it in the manner that would be most effective. It is an effort doomed to fail in the long run. Here's why:
1. As detailed by the name of the problem itself, the problem of Transnational Street Gangs is a Transnational problem. Even being the biggest, baddest world power, the United States will not and cannot effectively tackle such a problem unless it leads in efforts to integrate the strategy at the regional level. In other words, this sort of program will become a piecemeal program unless there's some sort of regionally designed and implemented "Community Shield" operation stretching from California to Panama.
2. The street gang problem is indeed a threat to public safety in the US, however it is becoming a problem of national stability and survival itself in places like Mexico but especially the 'Northern Triangle' of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras). This is where the problem can be said to originate in the late 80s and early 90s. A strategy of simply arresting and later deporting these criminals is not new, it has been occurring for 20 years, and has made the problem infinitely worse inadvertently, again, because it is not an integrated long-term strategy that takes into account the conditions under which these people are being deported.
3. Why does that matter? "It's not our problem, we just want to get them out." Well, thats one of the core parts of the issue: It is a problem, for everyone, whether in the US or Mexico, or Central America. When the first wave of mass deportations of gang members began 20 years ago, they consisted in many parts cases of people who had been for all intents and purposes become Americanized, who had never lived or only had a faint memory of their country of origin - they were in effect uprooted people, a fact which made them even more dangerous. Their gang teeth had been cut in the streets of Los Angeles, and they were now being exported, pissed off and trained, into countries with much less institutional capacity to deal with them and more corruption than the United States. They thrive and proliferate in these settings and have grown by leaps and bounds.
4. The fact is that this sort of problem is quite complex and requires complex solutions, adopted transnationally, to make it work. There's many contextual factors at work, of course - the poverty and the terribly low job opportunities in the migrant countries being a core both constituent parts of the problem (migration and crime). But a strategy that only tackles the problem of arresting and deporting, when fueling the problem by deporting them to weak states in which they can grow and therefore exacerbate the crime problem and encourage immigration for both economic and criminal reasons, will just continue to make this a loop: arrest, deport, come back, arrest, deport, infinitely and expensively.
1. As detailed by the name of the problem itself, the problem of Transnational Street Gangs is a Transnational problem. Even being the biggest, baddest world power, the United States will not and cannot effectively tackle such a problem unless it leads in efforts to integrate the strategy at the regional level. In other words, this sort of program will become a piecemeal program unless there's some sort of regionally designed and implemented "Community Shield" operation stretching from California to Panama.
2. The street gang problem is indeed a threat to public safety in the US, however it is becoming a problem of national stability and survival itself in places like Mexico but especially the 'Northern Triangle' of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras). This is where the problem can be said to originate in the late 80s and early 90s. A strategy of simply arresting and later deporting these criminals is not new, it has been occurring for 20 years, and has made the problem infinitely worse inadvertently, again, because it is not an integrated long-term strategy that takes into account the conditions under which these people are being deported.
3. Why does that matter? "It's not our problem, we just want to get them out." Well, thats one of the core parts of the issue: It is a problem, for everyone, whether in the US or Mexico, or Central America. When the first wave of mass deportations of gang members began 20 years ago, they consisted in many parts cases of people who had been for all intents and purposes become Americanized, who had never lived or only had a faint memory of their country of origin - they were in effect uprooted people, a fact which made them even more dangerous. Their gang teeth had been cut in the streets of Los Angeles, and they were now being exported, pissed off and trained, into countries with much less institutional capacity to deal with them and more corruption than the United States. They thrive and proliferate in these settings and have grown by leaps and bounds.
4. The fact is that this sort of problem is quite complex and requires complex solutions, adopted transnationally, to make it work. There's many contextual factors at work, of course - the poverty and the terribly low job opportunities in the migrant countries being a core both constituent parts of the problem (migration and crime). But a strategy that only tackles the problem of arresting and deporting, when fueling the problem by deporting them to weak states in which they can grow and therefore exacerbate the crime problem and encourage immigration for both economic and criminal reasons, will just continue to make this a loop: arrest, deport, come back, arrest, deport, infinitely and expensively.
