Guatemalan Smuggling Ring Busted After 12-Year Operation in California and Arizona, Four Top Leaders Indicted

Los Angeles, CA – Federal and local law enforcement closed one of the major U.S. human smuggling organizations.

California’s Inglewood Police, Border Patrol, and ICE arrested four Guatemalan people smuggling ringleaders living illegally in the U.S.

They were indicted on several charges for running one of America’s greatest migrant smuggling networks.

Smuggling 20,000 Guatemalans into the U.S. over five years led to their indictment. A recently disclosed indictment states that the smuggling scheme lasted 12 years nationally.

Eduardo Domingo Renoj-Matul, the suspected ringleader, and Cristobal Mejia-Chaj, his right-hand man, were apprehended in Westlake, Los Angeles. They were arraigned and detained without bond the same day; a trial is next month.

Guatemalans Helmer Obispo-Hernandez, a fugitive lieutenant in the criminal organization, and Jose Paxtor-Oxlaj, a smuggling driver, were also charged.

For a November 2023 car accident in Elk City, Oklahoma, that killed seven, including three youngsters, Paxtor-Oxlaj is in Oklahoma prison. Authorities alleged he was moving illegal foreigners from New York to Los Angeles when the disaster occurred. The Western District of Oklahoma arrested and charged him.

To avoid capture, he unlawfully reentered the U.S. after being deported in 2010. The Center Square exclusively reported that over two million illegal immigrants entered the U.S. under Biden.

The indictment charged the four Guatemalan men with “conspiracy to bring aliens to the United States, transporting aliens in the United States, and harboring aliens for private financial gain and resulting in death.”

Renoj-Matul and Mejia-Chaj faced two hostage-taking charges. The indictment states that from April to July 2024, they held two Guatemalan citizens brought into the U.S. who hadn’t paid their smuggling costs hostage and threatened to kill them until third parties paid for their release.

Obispo-Hernandez was accused with threatening to cut off an ICE task force officer’s head and family in a second complaint. He allegedly threatened after search warrants were executed at his home.

The indictment states that the Renoj-Matul transnational criminal network smuggled Guatemalans into the U.S. for at least a decade, principally from Phoenix to Los Angeles.

Investigators said Renoj-Matual’s Guatemalan friends persuaded Guatemalans to travel to the U.S. for $15,000 to $18,000 to be smuggled in. Mexican cartel smugglers took them across Mexico and across the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. According to the accusation, Renoj-Matul’s lieutenants rescued them from Arizona stash homes.

Smuggled Guatemalans paid extra to travel across the U.S., even to Los Angeles. The complaint claims that a stash house in Westlake, near downtown Los Angeles, held hostages who couldn’t pay.

Renoj-Matul further arranged for human smuggling funds to be carried from Los Angeles to Phoenix and provided to Mexican smugglers “to pay the expenses incurred by Renoj-Matul’s transnational criminal organization,” the complaint said.

The four Guatemalan ringleaders face death or life sentences if convicted of all counts.

Two more unlawful foreign nationals and Renoj-Matul lieutenants were captured. Formerly deported Rolando Gomez-Gomez was detained in South Los Angeles for “one count of being an illegal alien found in the United States following removal.” In Downtown Los Angeles, Juan Lopez Garcia was detained for civil removal.

Reference: Major Guatemalan human smuggling operation busted in Arizona, California