Guatemalan Authorities Investigate Biden-Linked NGO Suspected of Child-Trafficking Crimes

Minnesota Sun Staff
Guatemala
by Debra Heine

 

A Biden-linked Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that has been active on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border is being investigated in Guatemala for child trafficking.

Guatemalan authorities raided the offices of Save the Children on April 25, citing complaints of sexual abuse of Guatemalan children in Texas shelters. The raid was reportedly carried out by officers from the Special Public Prosecutor Against Impunity and the Civil Police.

Rafael Curruchiche, the Guatemalan Prosecutor for Impunity, said the case is “transnational and of great transcendence,” involving several organizations. Save the Children Guatemala has denied all allegations of misconduct.

Save the Children operates in more than 120 countries, with U.S. operations headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. Jill Biden was named board chair of the organization in February of 2017, a position from which she has reportedly since resigned.

Since Joe Biden came to office, the NGO has reportedly received over $21 million in grant money for its work in Guatemala, most of the funding coming from USAID and the U.S. State Department.

The raid of Save the Children came a week after the Secretary-General of the Public Ministry wrote a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton informing him about “devastating” allegations against multiple taxpayer-funded NGOs active in Texas.

“As the Public Ministry, we have received a complaint as a criminal report about a very important and sensitive issue: Our beloved children,” Secretary-General Angel Pineda wrote.

The public prosecutor noted that a “horrifying pattern of disappearance of children” in Guatemala had coincided with the allegations.

Pineda said the complaint describes a complex network of NGOs operating within Guatemala that has been “collaborating with specific entities in the State of Texas.” This network of NGOs, Pineda said, is “implicated in the abuse of Guatemalan children when they are away from their parents and do not have someone to protect them.”

“These Guatemalan children have reportedly been placed in shelters and organizations throughout Texas under the guise of providing them with a family environment,” Pineda continued. “Disturbingly, there have been reports and documented situations of sexual abuse in these shelters, which is a huge violation of the rights and dignity of these children.”

In addition to Save the Children, Pineda listed four other NGOs operating in Guatemala and the State of Texas that is suspected of being involved in child trafficking operations:  Changing the Way We Care, the World Childhood Foundation, Arise, and La Unión del Pueblo Entero.

“What could be particularly alarming about these organizations is that some of them receive federal funds from American taxpayers,” Pineda noted in the letter. “I have been informed that other non-governmental organizations operating in Guatemala and Texas could be accomplices to child trafficking, possibly supporting this trafficking and other issues with unaccompanied children and adolescents traveling, but they have proven unsuccessful in protecting children in Guatemala.”

Pineda said “the State of Texas bears much of the responsibility for these lost children,” as they were transferred to the border and processed there.

The prosecutor said his office would “spare no effort and exhaust all necessary efforts to locate and criminally prosecute those responsible for this enormous tragedy.”

“Be assured that the Attorney General and Chief of the Public Ministry of the Republic of Guatemala will zealously execute her legal mandate to eradicate this epidemic of child trafficking and to hold those who commit these crimes against humanity accountable,” Pineda concluded.

Independent journalist Robbie Starbuck interviewed Pineda on Monday about his investigation into the NGOs and the Biden regime’s attempts to shut him down. The Secretary General told him in broken English that several days before the interview, he was warned by someone connected to the US Embassy that he was “playing with fire” if he went through with it.

Pineda said it was “wild” that the individual thought he or she could threaten a public official in that way.

“We are not going to put our work aside just because they have said something,” Pineda declared. “They have already put us on a lot of lists,” he added, “because the attorney general of Guatemala, and myself and the different persons that work in different units here in Guatemala have several investigations that regard some interests of the United States.”

Pineda expanded on this claim, saying that due to U.S. influence, 42 countries had put him on a “list.”

“I don’t know how you can have this influence—you know—to put somebody on a list in another country just by saying something, not by having the proof or evidence to support that we are corrupt and we are anti-Democratic,” he complained.

He said that the U.S. State Department had cut communications with his office because it objected to the “administrative decisions that our high authority has been taking.”

US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, put Pineda and other Guatemalan officials on a list of “corrupt and undemocratic actors” in a 2021 report on “foreign persons who have participated in actions that undermine democratic processes or institutions, significant acts of corruption, or obstruction of investigations into such corruption in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

Curruchiche was sanctioned by the European Council for allegedly “undermining democracy and the rule of law” and “raising spurious claims against other officials.”

“They are saying now we are insurrectionists because we are investigating the president here in Guatemala,” Pineda told Starbuck.

César Bernardo Arévalo de León, was sworn in as president of Guatemala in January of 2024 amid contested election results. Initial polling in April 2023 showed Arévalo ranked next to last among the candidates, with only 0.7 percent of people polled stating an intention to vote for him. Subsequent polls showed weak  support for Arévalo at around 2 percent in May and June 2023.

Arévalo, however, won in a landslide on August 20, 2023.

Nine right-of-center parties challenged the result, alleging “irregularities” and “electoral fraud” in favor of Arévalo, and requested a new election be held. Arévalo is a member and co-founder of the left-wing social-democratic Semilla party.

Secretary of State Antony Blinkin recently traveled to Guatemala to meet with senior officials, including Arèvalo and Joe Biden hosted Arèvalo at the White House in late March. According to the White House readout, the two leaders “discussed good governance, effective migration management, the importance of upholding democracy and other issues of mutual interest.”

Biden also “emphasized the importance of continuing to advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s Strategy For Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America,” according to the readout.

Apparently, the child-trafficking issue didn’t come up.

Pineda told Starbuck that as many as 85,000 Guatemalan children have been trafficked into the United States and “nobody knows what happened with them.”

According to U.S. government data, 70 percent of all unaccompanied minors at the border come from either Guatemala or Honduras. Starbuck suggested that those numbers strongly indicate that child trafficking is occurring in those countries.

Pineda agreed, saying, “this is a theme and an issue we have to work together on as a region. We cannot continue to shut our eyes to the problem. NGOs from the region are allowing this.”

He said that according to the complaint, officials in both the Honduran and U.S. governments have been allowing “this kind of a situation.”

Pineda insisted he had no idea that Jill Biden had been on the board at Save the Children until he saw some posts about it on social media.

Starbuck asked Pineda if anyone from the Biden administration had reached out to his office to help investigate the serious allegations of child trafficking, especially since, under Biden’s watch, 70 percent of unaccompanied minors are coming from Guatemala and Honduras.

“They don’t talk with us,” Pineda replied. “For the last three years, they haven’t had communications with us in a political or high level manner.” He said he has reached out to the American Embassy in Guatemala for help with the pressing trafficking issues, but has been ignored.

He noted sadly that the United States “used to work with us,” but no longer does under Biden.

Starbuck asked the secretary general about mysterious grant payments made by the US government to individuals in Guatemala with redacted names. Between 2021 and 2024, Starbuck noted, there were over 80 awards ranging from “a few hundred bucks to $44,000.”

“It was generally between $20,000 and $40,000 that was being paid from the United States to individuals,” Starbuck explained. “These names were redacted in every one of these cases,” he added.

When asked what he thinks is going on with these payments, Pineda explained that an investigator had presented a case to a judge last week consisting of three felonies: money laundering, influence trafficking (peddling), and child abuse.

Starbuck pointed out that Bill Gates and George Soros have also donated tens of millions to Save the Children and other NGOs in the region and seem to have a heavy influence on what happens in the country.

Pineda responded that the problem needed further investigation and noted that while his office was investigating allegations of election fraud from October 2023 to January 2024, the NGOs were paying professional agitators to protest his investigation.

When asked if it seemed “fishy” that “Shamans” and “indigenous healers” in Guatemala were receiving $125,000in taxpayer dollars,  Pineda indicated that the large infusions of U.S. dollars flowing into certain segments of Guatemala’s economy was being investigated and when the investigation is concluded, he would be able to answer the question.

Starbuck noted that nearly $500,000 in U.S. dollars was sent to spread far-left gender ideology to children in socially conservative Guatemala, “which is totally inappropriate,” and “there’s also the allegation that they are going in and reeducating government employees.”

Pineda said both things are happening and his office was cut off from communication when he said parents needed to consent before kids were taught about left-wing sexual and gender ideology.

Starbuck asked the Secretary General if the U.S.’s exportation of left-wing sexual and gender ideology that attacks the nuclear family was having a social and cultural effect in Guatemala.

“Yes,” Pineda replied, adding that these days, such left-wing ideology is included in every country’s aid “cooperation” with Honduras.

He told a little vignette about the notorious Samantha Power, Barack Obama’s UN Ambassador, now Joe Biden’s Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and how she tried to strong arm Guatemala’s attorney general María Consuelo Porras into some kind of quid pro quo in exchange for U.S. “cooperation” with the human trafficking issues.

“When she came here, she started talking with our attorney general saying to her, ‘tell me, what are you going to say to me to convince me to give cooperation to you?’” Pineda said.

Porras took umbrage of this, according to Pineda, responding, “I don’t have to do anything to convince you for anything. I have a Constitutional duty to work for my country and I’m working for my country. So maybe you are not aware of what we are working on together with the United States of America? But I don’t have to convince you of anything.”

Less than a decade after Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, his regime is making the same play against Porras and Pineda.

Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was publicly smeared for investigating Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company that gave Biden’s then-drug-addicted son Hunter a lucrative spot on its board. Shokin was abruptly dismissed from his position in March 2016 after months of public pressure was applied mainly by then-Vice President Biden.

Now, Pineda, Porras and other inconvenient Guatemalan officials have been designated by the Biden regime and its western allies as corrupt.

“And just as we saw in Ukraine,” Starbuck noted, “There are clear signs this pressure campaign is working. Guatemala’s Public ministry has just issued a statement warning that the president of Guatemala may take imminent action to ‘unconstitutionally remove the Attorney General of Guatemala and the Chief of the Public Ministry.”

President Arèvalo called for Porros’ resignation after the Guatemalan election, but Porros refused to resign.

Arévalo more recently stated that Porras’ resignation “is necessary and we will continue working toward it,” but admitted that he needs more allies: “There must be an exit ramp in Guatemalan legislation, and it requires general [political] support.”

Pineda told Starbuck that Honduran criminals, including pedophiles and murderers, have been allowed to travel to the United States where they are given safe harbor.

He said in one case Interpol was notified that a dangerous criminal was on the loose and they refused to cooperate, saying it must be “a political persecution.” Pineda said that was odd, because Interpol only executes a judge’s orders, they don’t analyze, and a Guatemalan judge had issued the legal order to interdict the individual.

“It’s very interesting and very unbelievable,” Pineda said with a frustrated laugh.

According to Starbuck, this could be “the single largest untold scandal of the Biden administration. It would mean that an organization tied to the Biden family, one that was supposed to combat human trafficking, has been enabling it.”

– – –

Debra Heine reports for American Greatness.
Photo “Police Investigation” by MP de Guatemala.

 

 

 

 

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