We have noted repteated claims and denials that veterans of the feared Guatemalan counter-insurgency troops known as the Kaibiles are active in Chiapas and collaborating with Mexico's narco-mafias. But these Kaibiles, caught in the new Chiapas immigration sweeps, seem to have fallen on hard times. From El Universal, Jan. 25, our translation:

Chiapas: three presumed Kaibiles detained
ARRIAGA, Chiapas - Three presumed Guatemalan Kaibilies, as well as one solider of Salvadoran origin, were detained together with 97 undocumented Central Americans this Wednesday afternoon on a train run by the copmpany Chiapas-Mayab.

The operation, with the participation of some 50 agents from the Federal Preventative Police (PFP), the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) and the National Institute of Immigration (INM), was carried out by surprise on a cargo train.

Aboard some 18 freight cars hauled by the machine number 8850, were found some 300 men, women and children, who hoped to arrive in the United States.

Among those detained were Jorge Altamirano and/or Francisco López, Marcelo Nicolás Navinchoc Herrera y Melvin García Pérez, who said they were Kaibiles, as wel as a one-year-old child.

Also detained were 54 Guatemalans, 31 Hondurans, a Nicaraguan and 12 Salvadorans, including José Blas Antonio Guevara, who said he was a member of that country's army.

Those without papers were transfered to the migration station in Tapachula, to be repatriated to their countries of origin.

Sealing the southern border

The government of President Felipe Calderón set in motion last week a mega-operation para contrarrestar la delincuencia organizada, sin embargo sus acciones se enfocaron en la detención de migrantes centroamericanos que transitan por esta región en busca del sueño americano.

Some 400 agents of the PFP, AFI and INM have been dispatched to the 22 municipalities bordering Guatemala.

The principal actions so far have been carried out against the undocumented who ride the freight rail line to Ixtepec, Oaxaca, where some were able to escape.

Up until now, the operations implemented by federal agents against drug trafficking, kidnapping and the trafic in women and migrants, has only resulted in the detention of some 600 undocumented immigrants.

See our last posts on Mexico's narco-militarization, Chiapas, Guatemala and Central America.