Despite decades of U.S. aid and development programs, poverty, corruption and violence remain entrenched across El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The U.S. has invested billions to promote economic growth, improve governance and strengthen security. Yet for millions of people, fleeing north seemed to be the only viable path. While the Trump administration has disrupted this path, the underlying conditions persist.
At the heart of this crisis is elite capture, where political and economic elites dominate institutions and resources for personal gain. Latin America’s elites have long controlled land, wealth and political institutions, obstructing much-needed reforms.
Over time, these elites have developed entangled alliances with highly organized criminal networks — drug cartels, human traffickers and extortion groups — to sustain their dominance. Criminal groups have adapted by building political alliances, using bribery, threats and enforcement capacity to ensure mutual protection and influence within state institutions.
This criminal-political nexus destabilizes governance, exacerbates violence and erodes essential services. Together, these forces have created a criminal-political ecosystem in which exploitation, corruption and violence are mutually reinforcing, leaving ordinary citizens trapped in a cycle of instability.
This collaboration transforms public institutions into dysfunctional tools of exploitation.
In Honduras, political leaders implicated in drug trafficking retain power by forging partnerships with criminal syndicates. Police and judicial systems, compromised by these relationships, prioritize elite and criminal interests over public safety, leaving ordinary citizens defenseless against violence and extortion.
Meanwhile, multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, USAID and the World Bank, tasked with delivering crucial humanitarian aid, often fail to disrupt these entrenched power structures due to misaligned priorities.
Their focus on short-term outputs — such as the number of clinics built or beneficiaries served — over long-term outcomes like improved livelihoods and security undermines their impact. Program managers are incentivized to meet compliance and funding targets, creating reports of success that mask underlying failures.
This issue extends well beyond Central America. Elite-criminal alliances have destabilized Haiti, Gaza, Afghanistan and Venezuela, where aid programs intended to alleviate suffering have been marred by corruption, diversion and entrenched political control.
In Haiti, political factions and gangs control the flow of foreign aid, sabotaging infrastructure and governance. Venezuelan military and political elites manipulate aid to sustain political loyalty, while in Afghanistan, billions of U.S. reconstruction dollars have been squandered due to deeply embedded corruption. In Gaza, international agencies stood by as billions were siphoned off by blatantly corrupt actors, leaving services underfunded and vulnerable to collapse.
Multilateral organizations often depend on local governments and NGOs for program implementation. In many regions, these partners forge collaborative networks with elites and criminal networks.
Aid is funneled through creative contracting, money laundering schemes and patronage systems, reinforcing corruption. Small farmers, entrepreneurs and workers face barriers to credit, land and markets due to elite monopolization and criminal extortion.
Despite extensive reporting frameworks, these organizations struggle to enforce accountability. Monitoring relies heavily on data from elite-controlled entities, while field staff face bureaucratic obstacles that limit investigations into irregularities.
In many regions, law enforcement is either complicit in criminal activities or lacks the capacity to intervene. Criminal groups, shielded by political alliances, extort and terrorize communities through kidnapping, violence and coercion. For many families, fleeing is their only option for survival.
To address the root causes of migration and instability, the U.S. and its partners must implement reforms to disrupt elite-criminal alliances and improve aid effectiveness.
- Focus on performance-based outcomes: Programs must measure success by long-term improvements in economic mobility, security, and migration reduction. Tools like Bayesian modeling can provide real-time risk assessments and guide course corrections.
- Strengthen oversight and transparency: Programs should include independent audits, public reporting and whistleblower protections to deter corruption. Partnering with civil society organizations can improve accountability.
- Develop a diplomatic strategy: The U.S. must confront elite capture and criminal influence by conditioning aid on meaningful governance reforms and anti-corruption measures. Diplomatic engagement should push for greater transparency, judicial reform, and law enforcement capacity-building to counteract entrenched alliances.
The drivers of migration and instability are rooted in elite capture, evolving criminal power, and bureaucratic failures in aid delivery. These patterns affect not only Latin America but also regions facing protracted crises worldwide.
To break the cycle, U.S. aid must prioritize local empowerment, accountability and performance-driven results. Only by addressing these true root causes can we offer people a future of safety and opportunity in their own countries.
Ron MacCammon is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel and former political-military officer for the Department of State. He has lived and worked in Latin America for more than 20 years and has more than seven years of experience in Afghanistan.
