What is the US Alpha Task Force that is expanding its reach from the Mexican border to Darien?

Something extraordinary happened in Guatemala 15 months after Marta Raymundo, a 22-year-old woman from that country, was found dead near a highway in Texas, in the United States.

On the morning of August 2, 2022, Guatemalan police and prosecutors with the support of U.S. government agencies arrested 19 people in several surprise operations in different parts of the Central American country, including a mountainous area near the border with Mexico where they arrived protected by helicopters.

The detainees were suspected of belonging to a “coyote” organization that introduced undocumented migrants into the United States through Mexico, charging them around US$10,000 each for the land journey.

Among them were four men wanted by the US as members of that criminal organisation and as responsible for the death of Marta Raymundo, who was taken through the desert to Texas along with other undocumented migrants until she died in inhumane conditions.

His body was abandoned on the road.

The extraditions of the four Guatemalans to the US in March last year were described as “historic” by Washington, as they were the first made from Guatemala on charges of human smuggling resulting in death.

All of them pleaded guilty in a Texas court and were sentenced to between 10 and 30 years in prison. Two other individuals were also arrested and convicted in connection with this case.

Throughout this process, from supporting Guatemalan authorities in arresting suspects to their extradition and trial, a special US group created by the Joe Biden administration to pursue clandestine migrant transport networks in Central America and Mexico was involved.

Its name is Joint Task Force Alpha (JTFA) and its new mission is Expand its work to the border of Colombia and Panamawhere a growing flow of migrants from South America passes through the Darien jungle towards the United States.

“We’ve decided that we really need to take this fight even further south,” Jim Hepburn, co-director of the JTFA, told BBC Mundo.

But what does this task force consist of and what results has it had so far?

“Chase the command”

Hepburn explains that Joint Task Force Alpha is targeting organizations operating south of the U.S. border to smuggle immigrants into the country.

“Our goal is to pursue the leaders of these organizations,” he says.

The group was formed in June 2021 to coordinate investigations and charges by the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security against these mafias, involving federal prosecutors in the south of the country and agents from the Border Patrol, the FBI and the anti-drug agency DEA.

In addition, in coordination with the State Department, they sought from the beginning Improve coordination with the governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to dismantle networks that traffic migrants illegally.

What was new was that they began working “under a unity of purpose, from the perspective of an organization that can gather evidence and intelligence and target cases for prosecution,” says Ian Hanna, the other co-director of the JTFA and a Justice Department official, like Hepburn.

The group was created by the US at a time when arrests of foreigners on the border with Mexico were growing to levels not seen in more than a decade and illegal immigration was becoming one of the most sensitive politica
l issues in Washington.

In its first three years of existence, the JTFA achieved more than 300 domestic and international arrests, as well as more than 240 convictions in the USaccording to a recent official report.

Compared to 2020, charges of smuggling of aliens in the U.S. increased by nearly 25%.

Alpha Group directors say these cases were mostly against leaders of criminal organizations and not against migrants who crossed the border illegally.

Some of the results attributed to the work of the JTFA have attracted attention, apart from the extradition of the four Guatemalans accused of the death of Marta Raymundo.

Another example is that of Honduran María Mendoza-Mendoza, also known as “La Patrona” or “La Güera,” who received a 10-year prison sentence in May for human smuggling after being extradited to the United States as the leader of an organization that brought nearly a hundred undocumented migrants from her country, including unaccompanied minors.

“The JTFA It is a worthwhile effort. “It is always preferable to pursue organized crime that benefits from migrants, than to dedicate resources to blocking people seeking protection or a better life,” explains Adam Isacson, director of Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an organization that promotes human rights on the continent.

Isacson believes, however, that the results shown by the JTFA correspond mostly to “small-time operators” rather than leaders of migrant trafficking as reported.

“What leads me to believe this is the lack of arrests and prosecutions of corrupt government officials and security agents along the entire migration route to the United States, from at least Ecuador to Mexico,” Isacson told BBC Mundo. “The large (human) smuggling operations depend on relationships with corrupt officials”.

The Darien challenge

The expansion of the Aplha group’s work to Colombia and Panama is a sign of the growing importance Washington attaches to the Darien Gap that lies between the two Latin American countries.

As Panama’s new president, Raul Mulino, took office on Monday with a promise to stop undocumented migrants from passing through the Darien, the U.S. announced an agreement with the country to cover the cost of sending detainees back to their home countries.

The Darien has long been a preferred passageway for a growing number of South American migrants to enter Central America on their way to the United States, often with the help of hired guides due to the dangers that lurk there: from the inhospitable jungle to criminals of all kinds.

“In recent years, we’ve seen a huge influx of migrants from Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador” at the U.S. southern border, and “most are traveling through the Darien Gap, a very concerning recent development, not because of the people coming but because of the dangers associated with crossing that piece of land,” said Hanna, the JTFA co-director.

His colleague Hepburn points out that the joint US force will seek to establish with the governments of Colombia and Panama the same type of support that it achieved with the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico against networks that profit from the transport of migrants.

“There are many groups that benefit from human smuggling in the area,” he says. He adds that “The Gulf Clan plays a very prominent role in the region.”

The U.S. State Department recently offered rewards of up to $5 million to anyone who provides information on the Colombian criminal organization’s migrant transport business.

However, experts are cautious about the successes Washington may have in its new challenge in Darien.

“If this same dynamic of arrests of small-time smugglers continues in the Darien Gap, the only results will be against individuals that criminal groups will have no problem replacing,” warns Isacson.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor of politics and government at George Mason University in the US and an expert on human trafficking issues, believes that the announcement of the JTFA’s extension to Darien “It seems more like an electoral issue”.

“It seems that all the actions that the US government has taken to dismantle trafficking networks have not worked,” Correa-Cabrera told BBC Mundo. “There are more and more people from more countries around the world entering.”

“Undocumented immigrants are given jobs in the U.S. but there are no legal avenues for unskilled labor migration,” he added. “The U.S. immigration system is broken and there doesn’t seem to be an effort to fix it.”

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