Guatemalan Drug Trafficker Killed on the Mexico Border Was Under Investigation by the US

A California attorney general’s office reported Monday that it had opened an investigation since May 2019 against two Guatemalans who died in a confrontation between Mexican police and alleged drug traffickers in a controversial operation on the Mexico-Guatemala border.

The indictment, unsealed in San Diego and presented to a grand jury, revealed that at least 13 Guatemalan citizens are members of a Guatemala-based cocaine trafficking organization operating out of La Mesilla and Democracia streets in the department of Huehuetenango, on the border with Mexico.

Among them are two of the suspects killed by Mexican police, Baldemar Calderón Carrillo, alias “Don Balde,” and his son Walfre Donaldo Calderón Calderón. Authorities identified the former as the leader of the organization.

According to the US Attorney’s Office, the other 11 defendants remain at large. A statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California also detailed that another of Calderón Carrillo’s sons was arrested in Paris in January 2023.

This is Edgar Yovani Calderón-Calderón, alias “Panon,” also investigated in the same case and extradited to the United States from France in March 2024. He pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit international cocaine distribution in February of this year.

“Calderón Calderón admitted to participating in the distribution of large quantities of cocaine in Guatemala for a drug trafficking organization based in La Mesilla, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. From Huehuetenango, the cocaine was transported to accomplices operating near the Guatemala-Mexico border, into Mexico, and ultimately smuggled into the United States,” the statement said.

On May 30 of this year, Calderón-Calderón was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison. The Associated Press asked the Guatemalan prosecutor’s office if the structure identified by U.S. authorities was under investigation in the country, but received no response.