MIAMI — Central Americans will continue to flee their homes and head north no matter what sort of agreements the presidents of Mexico and the United States come to. Powerful forces — brutal violence, extreme poverty, the effects of climate change — are driving these men, women and children to leave. They are also being motivated to go north by the hope that they might live in the world’s wealthiest country. Simply put, the new wall that President Trump and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, widely known as AMLO, are putting up in the form of an immigration agreement isn’t going to stop them.

Last October when I was in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, I met a man in the city of Tapachula. “I was going to die in Honduras anyway,” he told me. “I’d rather take my chances and die in another country.” He was pushing a trolley that held his 1-year-old daughter. They were traveling with a caravan of roughly 7,000 Central Americans heading north through Mexico. I also met an 11-year-old girl from Honduras. She remained silent when I asked her about the gangs back home. (You can watch video of my conversations with these immigrants here.)

It’s not hard to understand why they want to leave their homes. “Violent crime is rampant in Honduras,” Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2019 says. “Despite a downward trend in recent years, the murder rate remains among the highest in the world.” If your teenage son was being pressured to join a gang, or if your daughter faced threats of rape, what would you do?

El Salvador also has one of the world’s highest homicide rates, which is creating a drag on the economy. According to the World Bank, “crime and violence make doing business more expensive, negatively affect investment decisions and hinder job creation.”