By Marshall Plane, Erica Criollo
Turning to shield herself from the biting January wind, 40-year-old Yolanda explained to us the tragic set of events that took her from her thriving market stall in Ecuador to the Manhattan street where she now sells hot meals to residents of a nearby migrant shelter.
Yolanda was part of a merchant association in Cuenca, Ecuador. In 2021, local gangs began extorting these vendors, charging a monthly “security fee.” From there, things only got worse. “The next thing they did was try to recruit our children,” she recalled. “I have a 20-year-old son. He’s the only child I have. They ordered me to give them my son so that he could work for them selling drugs.”
After she reported this to the police, Yolanda was beaten and robbed by gang members. Fearing for her life, she decided to leave Ecuador. “I told my son we couldn’t stay [in Ecuador], because these gangs are all over the country,” she said. “They have connections.” Having crossed seven countries to reach the United States, the two are now renting a room from an Ecuadorian woman in Brooklyn. “I’m here by the will of God, trying to get my daily bread,” she told us.
Yolanda’s journey is part of a sudden exodus from Ecuador. Fueled by economic hardship and a surge in violence, over 244,000 Ecuadorians have requested asylum in the US since 2021, the 8th-highest of all nationalities. Of those, 57% have settled in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, states with large Ecuadorian communities where many have contacts. At 52,000, Ecuador is the leading country of origin for asylum seekers in New York City.
Figure 1: Notices to appear in immigration court issued to Ecuadorian nationals by month. Source: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Between December 2024 and January 2025, The Immigration Lab conducted fifty-five interviews with asylum seekers and recent immigrants in New York City. Thirty of the individuals we spoke to were from Ecuador. Two significant patterns emerged: many of them were small-business owners in Ecuador who faced extortion from gangs or parents who fled to protect their children from forced gang recruitment and violence. Their stories highlight the devastating impact of rising gang violence, economic instability, and the government’s failure to protect its citizens, all of which have contributed to a major exodus from the country.
In 2018, Ecuador was one of the safest countries in Latin America, with a homicide rate around 6 per 100,000—a figure comparable to the United States. By 2023, its homicide rate was the highest in the region at 47 per 100,000. These statistics reflect what many interviewees described as a collapse of public safety in the country of 18 million.
Source: InSight Crime
Ecuador is the latest country to fall victim to the failure of US-led drug policy in the Western Hemisphere. A shift in trafficking routes was the proximate cause of the recent spike in violence. With security tightening in Colombian ports, international traffickers began using ports on Ecuador’s Pacific coast to smuggle cocaine to North America and Europe. Factors such as lax security, a weak judicial system, and official corruption made Ecuador an attractive transit point.
Control over these newly lucrative routes became hotly contested, a process worsened when the nation’s largest gang, Los Choneros, split into several factions in 2020. The policy of dividing inmates by gang affiliation exacerbated the prison violence it was supposed to prevent and made prisons a nexus of recruitment and coordination for major gangs.
Gangs’ increased need for manpower to control contested areas coincided with an economic downturn worsened by the pandemic. From 2019 to 2022, unemployment, underemployment, and poverty all increased. Gang recruiters began frequenting schools and soccer pitches in impoverished areas, recruiting youths with promises of income and status. When this fails, they often use force, threatening the family members of those who refuse to join.
According to InSight Crime, this is especially common in strategically important, contested areas where gangs need manpower to assert control. A prime example is Esmeraldas, a coastal region that has seen severe violence due to its utility as a chokepoint for cocaine entering the country from Colombia. “Ecuador has practically fallen to pieces,” says Miguel, a 40-year-old fishmonger from Esmeraldas. When he didn’t let Los Lobos recruit his stepson, they kidnapped and beat the boy. “He came home all beaten, swollen,” Miguel recalls. “We had to leave everything behind, because otherwise they were going to kill us.”
Twenty percent of our participants said forced recruitment of their children forced them to flee Ecuador. Another 23% were small business owners who said gang extortion made their lives impossible. Reports of extortion grew nearly 800% from 2021 to 2023. According to InSight Crime, gangs that lose control of cocaine trafficking routes often turn to extortion to finance their operations.
Source: InSight Crime
Anthony, a 43-year-old father of three from Guayaquil, told us extortion ruined his growing business as a self-employed trucker. “When we said that we didn’t have any more to give, they said they were going to bring reprisals. They were going to kidnap my son, kill him,” he recalled. “Unfortunately, the politicians are corrupt up to the police themselves, so we couldn’t make a report.”
According to a November 2022 poll, 75% of Ecuadorians similarly viewed the police as unreliable. Police corruption has exacerbated Ecuador’s crisis, allowing the flow of thousands of weapons to gangs. In many cases, officers who try to challenge gangs’ power have been assassinated. This fate nearly befell Marcelo, 29, a police officer and restaurant owner in the city of Machala. In late 2022 gang hitmen arrived and committed the first murder in what Marcelo says had been a very peaceful city. “We arrested them the next day,” he said. “Because of that arrest, I received multiple death threats. They knew my address, my restaurant, my children.” Marcelo now lives in Ridgewood, Queens, selling bread and delivering for Grubhub to make ends meet.
While increased violence has fueled emigration from Ecuador, many interviewees were also motivated to come by economic advancement, particularly that of their children. As of 2022, 25% of Ecuador’s population lived in poverty and was classified as having “inadequate employment.” When asked why she came to America, Katy, 29, immediately responded, “My son. With my love as a mother, I wanted my son to have more opportunities, learn another language, go to college. I want him to have what I didn’t have.”
Others, especially those who came alone, were focused on improving their family’s situation back in Ecuador. “I come from a poor family, we don’t have many resources, that’s why we came,” says David, 33. “I want to buy a house [in Ecuador] for my daughter, because right now we don’t have a home.”
Some indigenous Ecuadorians felt constrained by both poverty and discrimination. Pedro, 38, from the Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, said his departure was motivated by a feeling that racism in Ecuador would prevent his daughters from succeeding. “Just for being indigenous, for being Shuar, people assume you’re ignorant,” he said. In addition, the candy vendors on New York City’s subways are largely Quechua women from the Andean highlands, many of whom were also vendors back home.
These women, like many recent arrivals, are currently struggling to find a reliable niche in New York City’s labor market as they seek to rebuild their lives. In our next article, we will highlight notable patterns in the experiences of Ecuadorians working to adjust to their new homes.
Marshall Plane is a Research Assistant at The Immigration Lab at American University
Erica Criollo is the Research Coordinator at The Immigration Lab at American University
