Retired Salvadoran officer arrested by ICE, implicated in massacre

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested retired Salvadoran officer Roberto Antonio Garay Saravia for his involvement in the El Mozote massacre.

Saravia, a former officer in the Salvadoran Armed Forces, was arrested in New Jersey on Tuesday by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officers and Homeland Security Investigations agents.

The former officer was arrested for “assisting or otherwise participating in extrajudicial killings and for willfully misrepresenting this material fact in his immigration application,” according to a news release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“Individuals who have committed atrocities overseas will not find safe haven in the United States,” DHS Deputy Secretary John K. Tien said.

The El Mozote massacre, one of the most well-known killings in recent Latin American history, killed 1,000 people in the town of El Mozote, El Salvador in December 1981. U.S.-trained Salvadoran army units attacked the town and at least half of the people killed were children.

The Salvadoran officers were fighting leftist guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

Saravia was a section commander in a specialized counterinsurgency unit known as the Atlacatl Battalion, according to the release.

The unit has been directly implicated in a number of atrocities, including the El Mozote massacre.

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