A year after Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared war on organized crime, the country is grappling with a surge in displacement, as thousands flee escalating violence and a new wave of migrants has reached the US-Mexico border.
More than 80,000 individuals — both Ecuadorians and foreigners — were forcibly displaced due to the insecurity between January and October 2024, according to survey data from the humanitarian organization 3iSolution. Additionally, 40% of respondents reported experiencing extortion, while 100% said they had been victims of some form of violence, including sexual assault, robbery, property damage, or homicide.
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“These displaced people urgently need support from both the government and the international community to rebuild their lives,” Giovanni Rizzo, director of the Ecuador office for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said in a statement.
Ecuador has spiraled into violence, leading the government to declare an “internal armed conflict” against criminal gangs. The state of emergency triggered a coordinated counterattack by criminal groups against security forces and public institutions.
The coastal provinces of Esmeraldas and Manabí have been the hardest hit by organized crime, becoming major drug trafficking corridors towards Mexico and Central America.
The violence fueled a wave of migration, with people fleeing an unsustainable situation that threatens to worsen in the long term. This is reflected in the exponential increase in migrants recorded at the US-Mexico border. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported a record 124,000 encounters with Ecuadorian nationals at the southern border in 2024, compared to 24,900 in 2022.
Mexican government data similarly showed a rise in irregular Ecuadorian migrants, reaching 92,487 in 2024, a significant increase from 70,453 in 2023. Meanwhile, Panamanian authorities recorded 16,576 Ecuadorians crossing through the Darién Gap in 2024, making them the third-largest group after Venezuelans and Colombians.
InSight Crime Analysis
While Noboa’s crackdown on gangs initially disrupted criminal organizations, Ecuador’s criminal landscape has evolved rapidly. As gangs seek to ensure their survival, the violence driving internal displacement and migration is likely to persist.
The military intervention targeted transnational organized crime, delivering a temporary blow to gangs by dismantling the control and logistics networks of groups like the Lobos and the Choneros within the country’s prisons.
Ecuador’s migration exodus in 2024 coincided with a decline in homicide numbers. The National Police recorded 6,987 homicides between January and December 2024, a notable decrease from 2023, when Ecuador had the highest homicide rate in Central and South America, at 44.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. Along the Guayas River, the city of Durán became the epicenter of organized crime in the country.
However, the gangs have fragmented and reorganized, adapting to the government’s offensive. The relocation of criminal nerve centers, as the military wrested control of prisons from mafia groups, caused Ecuador’s largest gangs — the Choneros, the Lobos, and the Tiguerones — to splinter. They now operate in less hierarchical and more autonomous ways, intensifying conflicts among organizations and factions over control of key trafficking routes and illicit activities such as illegal mining.