Juan Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras, has requested help from the U.S. to create a plan in Central America to combat drugs, according to a BBC report.

Drug-related violence and poverty are chief reasons why the U.S. has seen a drastic rise in the number of undocumented immigrants trying to come into the country, Hernandez said.

News reports say that since October around 57,000 children have tried to illegally cross the border into the U.S. Hernandez spoke on the problem at a special conference in Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

"Seven out of nine children who venture on the dangerous journey towards the United States come from the most violent areas of Honduras," he said. "We have to recognize that our countries can't do it by themselves. We need the support of the U.S. and Mexico in a common problem"

The president pointed to a clear link between violence associated with the drug cartels in Honduras and the mass migration of children. Hernandez said the areas from which the children are leaving are also the areas with the heaviest cartel activity.

Honduras now has the highest murder rate in the world, according to Reuters. The notorious Mexican cartels have spread into Honduras in recent years, boosting violence in local street gangs and using the country's Caribbean coast to get drugs -- mainly cocaine -- into the U.S.

Jose Miguel Insulza, president of the Organization of American States, said the U.S. needs to act immediately to fight the problem.

"There must be an urgent solution to a regional crisis involving several countries," Insulza said at the conference in Honduras.

In June, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he was moving more border patrol agents to the Mexican border to cope with the influx of undocumented immigrants, along with increasing aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Central American officials say that increasing border patrol won't help fix the problem that is forcing so many children from their homes: poverty and drug-related violence.

"It's much more practical for the United States to launch a mini-Marshall plan, as they did after World War Two, to create opportunities and really get to the root of the problem in Central American countries that is fueling migration," Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Aguero said.