The number of migrants arriving in the United States from Ecuador could reach record levels as the South American country has erupted into a ‘civil war.’
Cartel thugs rampaged through Ecuador cities Tuesday after President Daniel Noboa, 36, declared a state of ‘internal armed conflict’ and ordered the army onto the streets.
Hooded gangsters seized a state TV news studio while a university was attacked and jail guards were reportedly executed by prisoners.
The disturbing events could lead to even larger numbers of Ecuadorians seeking safety in America. US Border Patrol agents apprehended a record 118,000 migrants from Ecuador in the fiscal year 2023, a 371 percent increase from 2022.
The Biden administration will be opening a new legal immigration pathway for some Ecuadorians in order to deter people in the country from making the journey to the US-Mexico border and flooding into the country illegally.
The number of migrants arriving in the United States from Ecuador could reach record levels as the South American country has erupted into a ‘civil war’
Cartel thugs rampaged through Ecuador cities on Tuesday after President Daniel Noboa, 36, (pictured) declared a state of ‘internal armed conflict’ and ordered the army onto the streets
Hooded gangsters seized a state TV news studio while a university was attacked and jail guards were reportedly executed by prisoners
The disturbing events could lead to even larger numbers of Ecuadorians seeking safety in America. Border Patrol apprehended a record 118,000 migrants from Ecuador in the fiscal year 2023, a 371 percent increase from 2022
Ecuador has been rocked by a series of attacks including explosions and the abduction of several police officers after the government imposed a state of emergency in the wake of the escape of a powerful gang leader from prison.
Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macías, 44, the leader of Los Choneros gang, was found missing from his cell in a low security prison on the same day he was supposed to be transferred to a maximum security facility, on Sunday.
A manhunt is underway for Macías and Los Lobos leader Fabricio Colon Pico, who also escaped prison on Tuesday since his arrest last Friday for alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate Ecuador’s attorney general.
The US State Department said it was ‘extremely concerned’ by the violence which erupted in Ecuador.
A family reunification program is being set up to allow those eligible to fly to the US and apply for temporary work permits if they are sponsored for an immigrant visa by relatives, Department of Homeland Security documents reveal.
It is another attempt by the Biden administration to reduce illegal border crossings and have created similar initiatives for migrants from Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras.
‘Establishing this process for certain Ecuadorian nationals will ensure more families can access lawful pathways rather than placing themselves at the mercy of smugglers to make the dangerous journey,’ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
The migrants need to have family members in America who are citizens or permanent residents to qualify and they will then sponsor them for an immigrant visa.
If selected and approved, they will be allowed to enter America under the humanitarian parole authority, without having to wait for a visa.
There was another spike in Ecuadorians crossing the US border in 2021 but at the time, they were allowed to fly to Mexico before entering the country illegally.
However, Mexico ended visa-free travel with Ecuador that year and more people have been crossing Panama’s dangerous Darién Gap.
Ecuadorians citizens have suffered from a struggling economy and rising violent crime due to drug cartels and gangs in recent years.
Macías, who was convicted of drug trafficking, murder and organized crime, was serving a 34-year sentence in La Regional prison in the port of Guayaquil.
Los Choneros is one of the Ecuadorian gangs authorities consider responsible for a spike in violence that reached a new level last year with the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
Men with their faces covered entered the set of the TC Television network in the port city of Guayaquil and shouted that they had bombs. Noises similar to gunshots could be heard in the background
Men were seen brandishing what appeared to be bombs and grenades (pictured)
An Ecuadorian police squad runs into the premises of Ecuador’s TC television channel after gunmen burst into the state-owned television studio live on air on January 9
Ecuadorian soldiers take security measures with a military armored vehicle on roads after Ecuador president declares ‘internal armed conflict’
The gang has links with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, according to authorities.
Experts and authorities have acknowledged that gang members practically rule from inside the prisons, and Macías was believed to have continued controlling his group from within the detention facility.
Prosecutors opened an investigation and charged two guards in connection with the alleged escape, but neither the police, the corrections system, nor the federal government confirmed whether Macías fled the facility or might be hiding in it.
In February 2013, Macías escaped from a maximum security facility but was recaptured weeks later.
In 2021, Macías’s girlfriend was briefly arrested after she spent a week sleeping in his jail cell – and was busted as she tried to leave the prison in the middle of a riot while wearing a guard’s uniform.
On Tuesday, gunshots rang out on live TV as men armed with bombs and grenades burst into a studio shortly after gangsters vowed a ‘war’ against the president’s plans to reclaim control from ‘narcoterrorists.’
Attackers carrying rifles and grenades stormed the studio of TC television in the port city of Guayaquil, western Ecuador, as a woman was heard amid gunshots pleading: ‘Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot.’
In the attack on Tuesday evening, intruders forced terrified TV crew onto the ground and a person could be heard screaming in apparent pain as the studio lights went off but the live broadcast continued for at least 15 minutes.
A TC employee said in a WhatsApp message: ‘Please, they came in to kill us.
‘God don’t let this happen.
‘The criminals are on air.’
Journalists on screen were reportedly heard screaming ‘they want to kill us all’.
One of the hooded men who attacked the set reportedly said: ‘We are on the air so that they know that we do not play with the mafia.’
After about 30 minutes of chaos, police officers were seen entering the studio while someone then called out that they ‘have a wounded companion.’
All the gunmen who broke into the studio were arrested, a police commander said.
Alina Manrique, the head of news for TC Television, said she was in the control room across from the studio when the masked men entered the building.
One of the men pointed a gun at her head and told her to get on the floor, she said.
Some of the assailants ran from the studio and tried to hide elsewhere in the building when they realized they were surrounded by police, she added.
‘I am still in shock,’ Ms Manrique told the Associated Press in a phone interview. ‘Everything has collapsed.
‘All I know is that it’s time to leave this country, and go very far away.’
Shortly after the gunmen stormed the TV station, President Noboa issued another decree designating 20 drug trafficking gangs operating in the country as terrorist groups and authorizing Ecuador’s military to ‘neutralize’ the groups – within the bounds of international humanitarian law.
Police detain suspected criminals a few blocks from the headquarters of TC television station
The TV studio was stormed in the port city of Guayaquil in western Ecuador
Ecuador’s national police chief announced a short time later that authorities had arrested all the masked intruders.
Cesar Zapata told the TV channel Teleamazonas that officers had seized the guns and explosives.
He did not say how many people were arrested.
‘This is an act that should be considered as a terrorist act,’ Mr Zapata added.
President Noboa decreed a national state of emergency for 60 days on Monday, allowing the authorities to suspend rights and mobilize the military in places like prisons.
The government also imposed a curfew from 11pm to 5am.
Noboa had vowed on Monday to ‘not negotiate with terrorists nor rest until we return peace to all Ecuadorans.’
He added that his government had decided to confront crime.
Noboa was elected in October on a pledge to fight rampant drug-related crime and violence in the South American country – once considered a bastion of peace, but now a key stop on the US- and Europe-bound cocaine trade.
He vowed Monday to bring the fight to the cartels after a powerful gang leader, Adolfo Macias, known as ‘Fito,’ escaped from prison the previous day.
States of emergency were widely used by Noboa’s predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, as a way to confront the wave of violence that has affected the country
A wave of attacks began a few hours after Noboa’s announcement on Monday.
Authorities reported multiple explosions and said seven police officers had been kidnapped.
They were taken in the coastal city of Machala, in the capital Quito, and in the southwestern province of Los Rios.
A chilling video circulating on social media showed three of the kidnapped officers sitting on the ground with a gun pointed at them as one is forced to read a statement addressed to Noboa.
‘You declared war, you will get war,’ the clearly terrified officer reads. ‘You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war.’
The statement added that anyone found on the street after 11pm (5am GMT) ‘will be executed.’
Ecuador has been beset with violence from brutal bloodthirsty gangs who are battling for control in spiraling turf wars that see gun massacres and beheadings.
It is situated between world-leading cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, and has become a center for foreign and domestic drug cartels blamed for a series of gruesome massacres, kidnappings and extortions.
Prison guards have reportedly been executed by the country’s cartel thugs. Pictured: Moments before a guard was killed
Gunmen were seen storming the University of Guayaquil on Tuesday
Armored trucks have been seen on the streets of Ecuador’s capital city of Quito
The country’s National Police tallied 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of 2023, far more than the 2,042 reported during the same period in 2022.
That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the country’s highest in history and double the total in 2021.
Violent deaths nationally rose to 8,008 in 2023, the government has said, nearly double the 2022 figure.
Violence in Ecuador culminated in August with the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, plunging the country into chaos.
A national emergency was declared in the wake of the assassination, while Ecuador’s economic capital, Guayaquil, has seen multiple successive states of emergency imposed.
In the north, the city of Esmeraldas is also frequently at the center of turf wars, as cartels battle for control over the country’s key drug supply routes.
Behind the violence is what the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime describes as a global ‘prolonged surge in both the supply of and demand for cocaine.’