1,500. This is the number of foreign prisoners, mostly from Colombia, Peru and Venezuela, that Ecuador wants to expel in order to fight gangs and drug traffickers, President Daniel Noboa announced on Friday. “Those who have an enforceable sentence of five years or more are going to be expelled from the country, (this is) about 1,500 people who came to this country to commit crimes and these are not simple crimes, these are serious crimes,” Daniel Noboa told a news conference after a security meeting in the southwestern port city of Guayaquil.
According to the 2022 prison census, there are 3,245 inmates of foreign nationality in Ecuadorian prisons, or 10% of the total prison population (31,321). Among them, 2,900 are men. President Noboa added that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in contact with its counterparts in “Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, because more than 80% of these 1,500 people are from these countries.” “These people are going to leave this country,” he again stressed, without specifying the timetable for this measure.
Epicenter of cocaine
The president also announced that he was working on a popular consultation, with up to fourteen questions which will focus on subjects such as the scope of action of the armed forces, reform of the judicial system and employment.
A country that has become a logistics center for the shipment of cocaine to the United States and Europe, Ecuador is ravaged by the violence of gangs and drug traffickers, with a record figure of 26 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, which could climb up to 40 this year, according to experts.
460 deaths among prisoners
Prisons are the scene of recurring massacres between rival gangs. Since February 2021, there have been at least a dozen massacres that left more than 460 detainees dead. To control the most dangerous inmates, the government has proposed the construction of at least six security prisons, according to Interior Minister Monica Palencia.
President Noboa has already announced plans to lease three ships that can serve as offshore prisons, with the aim of separating the most dangerous detainees while new facilities are built.