Guatemala arrests police officers involved in migrant smuggling network

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GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Guatemalan security agents arrested 25 mostly active police officers involved in a human trafficking ring that operated along a route used mainly by U.S.-bound migrants , Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez said on Tuesday.

Guatemala has for decades been a major transit country for migrants from Latin America and elsewhere as they head north to the Mexico-U.S. border.

The minister said two of the detained police officers were retired and 11 other civilians had also been arrested on charges including money laundering on behalf of an organization known as “Los Rs”.

Guatemalan authorities said the group had been operating for several years while accumulating millions of quetzals, the local currency.

“This organization used police officers, corrupting them in order to guarantee the trajectory of the people it trafficked across the country,” Jimenez said in a video message.

The Interior Ministry stressed that the prior arrest of two people who were illegally transporting ten migrants from Uzbekistan via Guatemala led to the operation that ultimately dismantled the network.

Four vehicles, a firearm and cash were seized, the ministry added in a statement. He did not reveal where the smuggled migrants were coming from, or where they would be sent.

The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security collaborated in the investigation, Jimenez added.

The US Embassy told the X that the human trafficking ring had exploited nearly 10,000 migrants.

In August, Panama launched U.S.-funded migrant deportation flights, as Washington seeks to stem the flow of people heading to its southern border, many of them seeking better economic conditions and security.

That same month, Guatemalan and U.S. authorities announced the joint dismantling of another human trafficking ring linked to the 2022 deaths of 53 migrants trapped in a sweltering truck in Texas.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; writing by Sarah Morland; editing by David Alire Garcia and Sandra Maler)