Guatemalan security forces expelled three alleged gang members to El Salvador, with arrest warrants in the neighboring country for various crimes.
Among those expelled is Raúl Serrano, identified as the third head of the gang called “Mara Salvatrucha”, as reported this Friday by the Ministry of the Interior from Guatemala.
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The other two Salvadorans were identified as Byron Antonio Avelar González, 27, and Josué Fernando Cáceres Menjívar, 20. All wanted by the Justice of their country for the crime of homicide, according to the same source.
Prior to their expulsion from Guatemala, the Salvadorans were captured on Thursday in the department of Escuintla, located 70 kilometers south of the capital.
The accused were handed over to the security forces of El Salvador on Thursday night, at the border of Valle Nuevo, in the department of Jutiapa, in the extreme east of Guatemala.
#RegionalSecurity 🇬🇹 | A major blow to the Mara Salvatrucha! 👊🔒 The capture of three suspected Salvadoran gang members is a crucial step in the fight against organized crime.
Read the information here 👇🏻
— MinGob (@mingobguate) May 19, 2023
Two other captures of Salvadoran gang members
In addition, the Guatemalan National Civil Police (PNC) reported the capture of two other Salvadorans, Henry Soriano and José Flores, accused of belonging to another gang structure.
In 2022, Guatemala expelled approximately a hundred Salvadoran gang members, according to official data.
El Salvador completed in this month of May a total of 14 months of being under an emergency regime that suspends various constitutional rights, after a wave of murders that claimed the lives of more than 80 people in three days of 2022.
Due to this state of emergency, some 61,000 people have been detained and many Salvadoran gang members have emigrated to Guatemala.
