GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuador plans to build more mega-prisons to combat a surge in drug trafficking which has caused homicide rates to soar, Interior Minister John Reimberg told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday.

The South American country is attempting to deal with a wave of drug violence by constructing mega-prisons as part of President Daniel Noboa’s hardline anti-gang policies.

The first facility, which opened in November, was modeled on El Salvador’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center and has capacity for 800 suspected gang members.

Reimberg said these prisons have prompted anger from gangs with ties to the international drug trade.

“We’ve had close to 600 drones that have tried to reach the El Encuentro prison since the day construction began,” Reimberg said, referring to the first prison in southwestern Santa Elena, where inmates with shaved heads wear orange uniforms.

“They are 600 drones from organized crime gangs... but we have been able to stop them from arriving.”

The government is planning to start construction on a second prison for about 15,000 people in May, which Reimberg said would be completed within 18 months.

Authorities are keeping the location of the second facility confidential for security purposes.

“A third prison? Yes, probably. And as many as are needed for these criminals,” Reimberg told AFP during an interview in the conflict-ridden port city of Guayaquil.

No negotiation

About 70 percent of the cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru — the world’s largest producers of the drug — transits through Ecuador to be exported via its Pacific ports.

The new prison is “essential,” Reimberg said, adding that it would be “very secure, just like the Encuentro facility is today.”

Clashes between gangs with links to international cartels have turned Ecuador into one of the region’s most violent countries, with a rate of 51 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

“We are not going to negotiate, we are not going to make pacts, we are going to attack them, we are going to weaken them,” Reimberg said, noting that 74,000 people were arrested last year.

The minister said “highly dangerous criminals” who “must be held in isolation” will be transferred to the second prison, shrugging off criticism about abuses from human rights organizations.

“I have to answer to the country with security,” he said.

Reimberg pointed to three factors as to why violent crime figures have yet to fall despite the government crackdown, blaming a corrupt judiciary and the actions of past leftist governments.

The third factor, he argued, was Colombia, amid simmering tensions between the two Andean nations that included sizable mutual tariffs.

“We have a neighboring country that is not working on the border, that is not attacking criminal groups... we are doing our part,” he said.