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“The result of this dismantling was due to internal collaboration within the National Civil Police itself,” the minister said.
Guatemalan authorities on Tuesday dismantled a network of police officers smuggling migrants to the United States, Interior Minister Francisco Jiménez said.
The minister said that 36 people were arrested, including 23 active police officers and two retired ones.
“Today (Tuesday) in the morning a criminal structure dedicated to human trafficking was dismantled,” Jimenez said on the social network X.
The traffickers “used police officers, corrupting them to ensure the safe passage of the people they trafficked on the country’s routes,” he added.
For its part, the United States embassy in Guatemala indicated in X that the operation to dismantle the network was carried out “under the leadership” of the Guatemalan Ministry of the Interior and the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agency.
The diplomatic mission added that the structure “exploited” “almost 10,000 migrants” and highlighted “the bilateral coordination and exchange of information” to carry out the arrests.
Jiménez explained that the operation is part of President Bernardo Arévalo’s “strategy” of “not criminalizing migrants, but pursuing and dismantling human trafficking structures.”
“The result of this dismantling was due to internal collaboration within the National Civil Police itself,” the minister said.
During the operation, which included 34 raids in towns in the east, west, south and the country’s capital (center), “four vehicles, a firearm and cash” were also seized, prosecutor Marvin Orellana told reporters.
Orellana explained that the network mobilized migrants from Russia, China, Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Vietnam, among other nationalities.
