Ecuador will soon begin deporting 1,500 foreign prison inmates in an effort to reduce prison overcrowding, President Daniel Noboa announced on Wednesday.
The majority of the soon-to-be deported inmates are reportedly Colombian citizens, and the rest are from Peru and Venezuela. Colombia and Peru share borders with Ecuador, while Venezuela, which shares a border with Colombia, is in close proximity. Future deportations will reportedly focus on inmates hailing from countries located further away from Ecuador.
The announcement occurred after Ecuador declared a state of “internal armed conflict,” deploying its military and police forces to wage a war against more than 20 of the country’s most dangerous criminal gangs. The gangs launched a violent wave of terrorist actions this week that have left at least 12 registered violent deaths as of noon on Wednesday.
The violence erupted after the disappearance of Ecuador’s most wanted criminal, gang leader José Adolfo Macías, who seemingly vanished from his prison cell on Monday. Macías’s prison escape was immediately followed by widespread gang violence, kidnappings, and prison riots, most of which occurred in the city of Guayaquil, where the prison that housed Macías is located.
Noboa made the deportation announcement during an interview with the local Canela Radio station, noting that “almost all of the prisoners in Ecuador are Colombian, Peruvian, and Venezuelan citizens.” The deportations, Noboa stated, will be carried out through protocols detailed in international agreements.
“Colombia said they wanted to help us and I told them, perfect, we’ll send them the 1,500 prisoners that we are keeping in Ecuadorian jails,” Noboa said. “They have sentences of five years or more and, according to Ecuadorian law and international treaties, we can take them out and, thank you very much, stay over there.”
During the interview, Noboa also condemned the fact that Ecuador spends more on feeding the soon-to-be deported inmates than on school breakfast programs for the country’s children. Noboa also confirmed his plans to move forward with the construction of two maximum security “mega-prisons” that his administration promised to build in 2024. The planned prisons will be similar to the one built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in 2023 as part of El Salvador’s own war on its criminal gangs.
Colombia’s Foreign and Justice Ministries issued a joint statement on Wednesday evening in which they expressed their readiness to activate the corresponding deportation protocols and treaties signed between the countries — but stressing that the deportations must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Said evaluations, they insisted, must respond “to objective criteria and must have the consent of the person deprived of liberty.”
Colombia’s statement reads in part:
The possible expulsion of nationals announced in the media by the President of the Republic of Ecuador, other than through repatriation, would constitute a unilateral decision by the Ecuadorian State that would leave without effect the judicial decisions of its [Ecuador’s] judicial bodies in Colombia.”
The Government of Colombia trusts that the Republic of Ecuador will take the necessary measures to preserve the human rights of the persons deprived of liberty in its territory, without prejudice to any repatriation procedures that may be required.
Colombian Justice Minister Néstor Osuna said during a press conference on Wednesday that if Ecuador deports the Colombian inmates then the Colombian government will have to receive them regardless of whether open criminal cases exist for those individuals or not.
“If they expel them, first of all they are expelling them from jail; that is, they are letting them go free and when they arrive at the border, of course a Colombian citizen can enter Colombia,” Osuna said.
Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro has not publicly commented on the matter at press time. Similarly, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, who offered her support to Noboa and ordered the reinforcment of security of Peru’s shared border with Ecuador, has not commented on the deportation plan. Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro has not commented on the matter at press time.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
