Guatemala’s government announced Tuesday that the United States would send an FBI team to help capture gang leaders whose jailbreak has triggered a security crisis in the Central American country.Local authorities last month announced that 20 members of the Barrio 18 gang had broken out of the Fraijanes II prison near Guatemala City, but did not specify when the escape happened.Only four of the fugitives have been recaptured so far.Guatemala has now followed Washington’s lead by classifying Barrio 18, an El Salvador-based gang with a reputation for violence and extortion, as a “terrorist” organization.In September, the U.S. government blacklisted Barrio 18 as part of its crackdown on drug trafficking.The U.S. Embassy criticized the escape as “utterly unacceptable” and called on the Guatemalan government to “act immediately and vigorously to recapture these terrorists.”After the jailbreak, President Bernardo Arevalo dismissed his Interior Minister, Francisco Jimenez. He replaced him with Marco Antonio Villeda, who requested the FBI’s assistance in tracking down the escapees.Villeda told reporters on Tuesday that the FBI’s Joint Task Force Vulcan would participate in the operation.The specialized task force was created by Donald Trump in 2019, during his first term as president, with the aim of dismantling Latin American criminal organizations.It was originally intended to target the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang. According to the Salvadoran government, Barrio 18 and MS-13 are responsible for the deaths of about 200,000 people over three decades.Last week, the Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office requested that President Arevalo’s immunity be lifted in order to investigate him for “breach of duty” in connection with the escape.Barrio 18 is one of the largest gangs in the Northern Hemisphere, the U.S. State Department said in a September news release, adding that the terror designation “further demonstrates the Trump Administration’s unwavering commitment to dismantling cartels and gangs and ensuring the safety of the American people.”More than a dozen groups have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term. In February, Mr. Trump declared eight drug cartels as terrorist groups, including the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.The Trump administration has used the foreign terrorist designation to justify multiple lethal strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs off South America, including an attack Tuesday on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed two people, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.
