48 Jacqueline Bhabha charged with no criminal infractions. What is required, then, instead of punitive and deterrent policies? There are much better alternatives. The first, and most crucial, involves a constructive and collaborative regional approach – not one that coerces neighbors to accept refugees destined for the United States (as the asylum cooperation agreements described earlier do), but one that deploys the United States’ substantial resources – financial, political, and technical – to the urgent task of making the Northern Triangle countries safe again for children. This is no easy task. The rule of law has been shattered by conflict, drug cartels, and the export of gang violence through deportations from the United States. Courageous local judges attempting to punish kleptocracy at the highest government levels have been forced to flee for their lives. These challenges are exacerbated by rural to urban migration caused by environmental damage. Children in overcrowded and under-resourced cities need safe and well-resourced schools, parents with jobs, effective health care, and playgrounds not threatened by gangs. Both selfinterest and the reparative obligations that result from decades of engagement with military regimes should drive substantial US investment in building these resources. Roberto Suro, a respected Central American expert, has pointed out that the Trump administration’s total 2019 budget for the wall, immigration enforcement, and detention ($44 billion) is close to the combined GDP of El Salvador and Honduras ($48 billion).48 A portion of those huge sums deployed to encourage Northern Triangle economic development would greatly contribute to improved local conditions and attendant decreases in migration pressure. A civic intervention program introduced by the Obama administration in one of Honduras’s most notorious neighborhoods produced excellent results. At an annual cost of $100 million, an integrated set of schemes in Rivera Hernández, the most violent neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, the murder capital of the world for four years in a row, reduced the risk of crime and alcohol or drug abuse among targeted youth by 77 percent compared to their untargeted peers. The violence prevention program also increased conviction rates for those charged with homicide from a previous low of 4 percent to a record 50 percent. Most significantly, over the two-year period of intervention, the violence prevention program reduced by more than half the number of Honduran youth arriving at the US–Mexico border.49 This was one initiative in one neighborhood. Similar past initiatives in El Salvador have also been successful. Instead of canceling them, the administration should scale them up. This would improve youth safety and reduce migration pressures. R. Suro, “We Need to Offer More Than Asylum,” New York Times, July 14, 2018, www.nytimes .com/2018/07/14/opinion/sunday/migration-asylum-trump.html. 49 S. Navarro, “Op-Ed: How to Secure the Border. Spoiler Alert: A Wall Won’t Do It,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2017, www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-nazario-what-works-toend-illegal-immigration-20170423-story.html. 48 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press