The entire article, “Young asylum seekers recount violence,” can be accessed online by Houston Chronicle subscribers at: http://www.chron.com .

‘The country’s homicide rate jumped 70 percent in 2015 to 103 murders for every 100,000 residents, making it the most dangerous country in the world after Syria, said Elizabeth Kennedy, a San Diego State University social scientist who studies child migration in El Salvador. She interviewed 322 children who had left on their own in 2014 only to be apprehended in Mexico and sent back. Sixty percent said they were fleeing violence.

“Given the high homicide rates and the lack of ability from the state to combat these gangs, clearly this is a refugee crisis,” Kennedy said.’