by WorldTribune Staff, October 19, 2018
Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales said recently that nearly 100 Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists have been apprehended in the Central American nation. The disclosure led to concerns that jihadists could infiltrate the “caravan” that has swelled to more than 5,000 on its way through Mexico to the southern border of the United States.
During a recent security conference attended by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as well as the presidents of Honduras and El Salvador, Morales said that his administration had captured “close to 100 persons completely involved with terrorists, with ISIS and we have not only detained them within our territory, but they have been deported to their country of origin.”
Several of the terrorists were Syrians caught with fake documents, according to Guatemala’s head of intelligence.
Morales also revealed that Guatemalan authorities captured more than 1,000 gang members, including members of MS-13, Judicial Watch noted in its latest Corruption Chronicles.
“Guatemala has long been known as a major smuggling corridor for foreigners from African and Asian countries making their way into the U.S.”
Judicial Watch has reported on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiative that transported illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and released them without proper processing.
“The government classified them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and transferred them 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way,” Judicial Watch said. “The OTMs were from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala and a security company contracted by the U.S. government drove the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix. Some could have been ISIS operatives.”
Last year, Guatemala’s largest newspaper, Prensa Libra, published an in-depth piece on the inner workings of an international human smuggling network that moves migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh to the U.S. Individuals are sent to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates then flown to Brazil before heading to Colombia.
Once in South America, the migrants are transported to Panama before moving on to Costa Rica and then a central point in Guatemala.
“One Spanish news report refers to Guatemala as a human smuggling paradise because it’s so easy to get fake passports,” Judicial Watch noted. “A few years ago, the head of Guatemala’s passport division got arrested for selling fake passports to a group of Colombians, according to a government announcement.”
As a caravan of some 4,000 Central American migrants makes its way north, “let’s not forget that Guatemala is one of the countries that bombarded the U.S. with illegal immigrant minors under President Barack Obama’s open border free-for-all,” Judicial Watch said.
Amid the flood of migrants, “a terrorist could have easily slipped in considering the minors, coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), were not properly vetted and some turned out to be violent gangbangers who went on to commit heinous crimes in their adopted land of opportunity,” Judicial Watch said.
Border Patrol agents in Texas have been ordered to release illegal immigrants caught entering through Mexico because detentions facilities have no bed space, news reports have said.
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