Federal officials charge four men of smuggling immigrants from Guatemala

Federal officials arrested two men in Los Angeles on Friday and were charged with smuggling about 20,000 undocumented immigrants from Guatemala to the United States, including seven who died in a car crash in 2023. 

Officials said they charged four operators in total of the so-called Torko Organization. One of the alleged smugglers escaped arrest and the fourth is already in prison. 

Eduardo Domingo "Turko" Renoj-Matul, Cristobal Mejia-Chaj, Helmer Obispo-Hernandez and Jose Paxtor-Oxlaj were charged in LA federal court last week.

Renoj-Matul, 51, and Mejia-Chaj, 49, were arrested Friday. Each appeared in court and were held without bond. If convicted, they could each face the death penalty, officials said.

Paxtor-Oxlaj, 44, is behind bars in Oklahoma for his role in a 2023 car crash that killed seven migrants, including three children, court papers show.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph T. McNally said that on Friday as search warrants were carried out near downtown Los Angeles, Obispo-Hernandez, 41, telephoned an investigator on the case and threatened to kill him and behead members of the agent's family. The defendant escaped being arrested, McNally said.

All the defendants are Guatemalan nationals who are or were illegally living in the United States at the time of the alleged offenses, federal authorities said.

Once the undocumented immigrants were smuggled into the United States, some were held in "stash houses" in the Westlake district and elsewhere until fees to the smugglers were paid, authorities said.

The ring's actions "demonstrate a complete disregard for the nation's immigration laws," McNally said during a news conference Monday in downtown Los Angeles.

He added that the sweep showed a renewed effort to "revitalize immigration laws in which dozens of complaints were filed against illegals with criminal records."

Dwayne Angebrandt, Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles acting deputy special agent in charge, said the organization has transported about 20,000 undocumented immigrants into the Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona, areas since 2019.

"The illegal activity endangers the national security," he told reporters, and asked for the public's assistance in reporting any information on smuggling organizations.

Gregory K. Bovino, chief patrol agent of U.S. Border Patrol's El Centro Sector, said the Turko operation was a complex coast-to-coast organization that "was destroyed, dismantled top to bottom on Friday."

He continued, "Border security is created, it doesn't just happen."

The U.S. Attorney's Office alleges that Renoj-Matual was assisted by associates in Guatemala who accepted payment of between $15,000 and $18,000 for each undocumented immigrant smuggled into the United States, and coordinated the journey from Guatemala to the United States.

In November 2023, Paxtor-Oxlaj caused a car accident in Elk City, Oklahoma, while he was smuggling undocumented immigrants from New York to Los Angeles. That car accident resulted in the deaths of seven people who were passengers in the vehicle he drove. Of the seven people killed, three were minors, including a four-year-old child, court papers show.

Additional reporting by City News Service.