GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Guatemalan security agents arrested 25 mostly active police officers implicated in a human trafficking network that operated along a route used by mostly U.S.-bound migrants, Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez said on Tuesday.
Guatemala has been a major transit country for decades for migrants from Latin America and beyond as they travel north to Mexico’s border with the United States.
The minister said two of the detained police officers were retired, and an additional 11 civilians were also arrested on charges including money laundering on behalf of an organization known as “Los Rs.”
Guatemalan authorities have said the group has operated for several years while accumulating millions of quetzals, the local currency.
“This organization made use of police agents, corrupting them in order to guarantee the trajectory of the people who they were trafficking across the country,” Jimenez said in a video message.
The interior ministry noted that a prior arrest of two people who were illegally transporting 10 migrants from Uzbekistan through Guatemala had led to the operation that ultimately dismantled the network.
Four vehicles, a firearm and cash were seized, the ministry added in a statement. It did not disclose where the migrants who were being smuggled came 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 U.S. embassy said on X the human-trafficking network 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 traveling to its southern border, many seeking better economic conditions and security.
The same month, Guatemalan and U.S. authorities announced the joint dismantling of another human-smuggling network with ties 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)
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