Honduras plans to build an island prison colony to house 2,000 gang members. It would be the only island penal colony in the Western Hemisphere.

Inspired by neighboring El Salvador, whose government has gone to war Honduras’ President Xiomara Castro is planning against the country’s gangs to build a prison for arrested gang leaders on the Great Swan Island in the Cisne Archipelago, The Associated Press reported. report Wednesday.

Honduran military commander José Jorge Fortin said the only way to communicate with the island was via satellite. Considering it takes a day to reach the island by boat from the mainland, officials said the quarantine would prevent the gang leaders from conducting operations while incarcerated, according to the Associated Press.

“Gang leaders feel the pressure when they get to the island because this is the furthest place they can think of,” Fortin told the media. “The idea is that they lose touch with everything, they lose touch with society as a whole … so they can actually atone for their sins.”

After riots broke out in a women’s prison in Honduras in June, killing 46 inmates, Castro announced a new strategy. phone Operation Faith and Hope, Prensa Latina to thwart gang activity inside the prison report. Within weeks, military police raided prisons across the country and recovered millions of dollars worth of drugs, guns, cash, mobile phones and other contraband, the newspaper said. (Related: El Salvador president explains why he let inmates destroy gang members’ gravestones)

The crackdown on gangs mirrors the strategy of neighboring El Salvador’s President Naive Bukele, whose tough approach to gang activity saw the country’s homicide rate drop by 56.8 percent in 2022. according to to Reuters.