As thousands of Honduran migrants seeking asylum in the United States trek northward through Mexico, President Trump has pledged to stop them at the border by militarizing it with armed federal troops, under the guise of protecting Americans from “criminals” and an “invasion.”

What he fails to recognize is that cruelty won’t solve the current refugee crisis. Neither will buddying up with authoritarian leaders in Central America. Instead, those two strategies only deepen the crisis, because criminality and misrule are exactly what the caravan is fleeing.

What Mr. Trump calls an invasion is actually the visible face of a deadly crisis of governance and violence in almost all of Central America — a retreat from the rule of law in favor of rule by corruption and criminality abetted by officials with impunity.

For example, Mr. Trump supports President Jimmy Morales, his authoritarian counterpart in Guatemala. Mr. Morales is under investigation for possible corruption by the United Nations Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala. He has fought back by revoking the visas of many of the commission’s investigators.