ICE removes former civil patrol leader accused of human rights abuses in Guatemala

BOSTON, Mass. — Officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) removed Juan Alecio Samayoa Cabrera, 69, a Guatemalan citizen wanted in Guatemala in connection with abuses committed against indigenous Mayans in the early 1980s, Nov. 27, 2019.

Samayoa Cabrera, a former civil patrol leader, has been charged in Guatemala for his alleged role in more than 150 human rights abuses, including torture, rape and extrajudicial killing, in El Quichè.

On March 29, 2018, an immigration judge ordered Samayoa removed from the United States. His appeal was dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals Sept. 10, 2018. On Oct. 1, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied in part, and dismissed in part, his petition for review. This case was litigated by ICE’s Boston Office of the Chief Counsel with the support of the ICE Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center (HRVWCC) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Providence, Boston, and Guatemala City.

Since 2003, ICE has arrested more than 450 individuals for human rights-related violations of the law under various criminal and/or immigration statutes. During that same period, ICE obtained deportation orders against, and physically removed, more than 1,030 known or suspected human rights violators from the United States. Additionally, ICE has facilitated the departure of another 160 such individuals from the United States.

Currently, HSI has more than 180 active investigations into suspected human rights violators and is pursuing more than 1,640 leads and removals cases involving suspected human rights violators from 95 different countries. Since 2003, the HRVWCC has issued more than 76,000 lookouts for individuals from more than 110 countries and stopped over 315 human rights violators and war crimes suspects from entering the United States.