“The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are worth more than the country’s entire gross domestic product.”

That’s an estimation from The New York Times last July during this past summer’s surge of Central American immigrants migrating through the Mexican-American border, which caused an uproar across North America.

Most of these migrants were children traveling alone — mainly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — attempting to escape gang and drug-related violence back home.

Normally, U.S. immigration authorities deal with roughly 8,000 unaccompanied children caught trying to cross the border each year. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, in 2014, there were almost 70,000.

By the end of 2014, however, the Department of Homeland Security reported that numbers began decreasing, and while summer is typically the season for migration, many are hopeful that 2015 will not find as many attempted border-crossings.

But this is not a cause for celebration. The dwindling numbers are simply a result of increased border patrol — particularly patrol of Mexico’s southern border. In fact, the actual problems these children are trying to escape are still thriving.

So how is this our problem?

According to the National Immigration Forum, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent over $2 billion on detention centers for illegal immigrants in 2014.

And these detention centers are no luxury suites. At the height of the immigration rush last summer, a Los Angeles Times reporter noted that many centers were housing double the number of immigrants they were built to hold, rendering the centers “overcrowded” and “unsanitary.”

Alternatively, the Administration for Children and Families, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, used only $868 million to provide safe, quiet shelters sponsored by non-profit organizations.

So instead of spending a few million dollars to house these terrified and exhausted children, we’re spending a couple billion to stuff them in dirty, prison-like conditions until border patrol can decide whether or not they get to stay.

Maybe we have the money to do something more for these children, but why should we?

We have our own children to worry about, and helping these will just open the floodgates.

While that may be true, we have more of a responsibility to Central American kids than you might think.

First of all, they’re right next to us.

So maybe Honduras and El Salvador don’t actually touch our borders. But if they’re close enough to annually provoke 50,000 Central American minors to hop aboard the dangerous La Bestia train line that travels hundreds of miles through the entirety of Mexico, as the Migration Policy Institute reports, they’re close enough to receive some aid from their wealthier, more stable neighbor.

Secondly, these kids are in dire straits. UNICEF cites Central America as being one of the most dangerous places in the world for children.

As one child in Honduras reported to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, “If you don’t join, the gang will shoot you. If you do join, the rival gang will shoot you — or the cops will shoot you. If you leave, no one will shoot you.” That’s the advice his grandmother gave him.

Lastly — and perhaps most importantly — the whole thing is partially our fault.

The gangs that are corrupting the streets? Descendants from L.A. gang members we deported in the 1990s.

The drug trade that’s killing the economy? Drugs being shipped to the United States.

Our cocaine. Our pot. Someone else’s blood on the streets.

So what’s our solution?

Focus more U.S. efforts on our neighboring kids? Adopt a Central American immigrant today? Stop doing blow on the weekends and complaining that your life is miserable?

Understandably, some of this is going to require governmental intervention and governmental intervention alone.

But if we start treating these drugs the way we treat factory farm meat or sweat shop sneakers, we’ll be doing our part to eradicate what has sadly become the norm for so many Central American children.