Save the Children disputes abuse allegations after Guatemalan prosecutors raid offices

GUATEMALA CITY -- The aid group Save the Children said there is nothing to support accusations of misconduct, speaking after Guatemalan prosecutors raided its offices in the Central American country looking for evidence of alleged abuse of migrant children.

“We have been shocked and puzzled by the unprecedented search of our offices by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala,” the organization said in a press release Thursday night hours after the raid.

The group said it was not aware of any specific accusations against it.

“We defend the rights of children and adolescents and ensure that they survive, learn and are protected from harm in more than 100 countries around the world,” said the group, which has worked in Guatemala since 1976.

The raid came after prosecutors — themselves accused by the U.S. of corruption and trying to undermine Guatemala’s democracy — claimed Save the Children and a number of other non-governmental groups could “be participating in child trafficking operations.”

Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche said the raid was to search for evidence from a complaint made relating to those claims, which was “transnational and of great importance” because it involves children’s rights.

The escalating controversy began last week when Fox News contributor Sara Carter published a video of Angel Pineda, the secretary general of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, saying it had received a complaint about the organizations. Carter was the first to announce the raid on social media before police and prosecutors had even entered the offices.

In the video, Pineda called not on the Biden administration or other international authorities, but on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to aid him in the investigation.

Paxton, a Republican, has railed against U.S. President Joe Biden's handling of rising migration to the U.S.-Mexico border. In February, he tried to sue a migrant aid group in El Paso, accusing it of “facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.” The effort was blocked by a judge.

“The chaos at the southern border has created an environment where NGOs, funded with taxpayer money from the Biden Administration, facilitate astonishing horrors," Paxton said in a statement.

Those allegations sounded strikingly similar to ones made by Guatemalan prosecutors in a letter sent to Paxton earlier this month.

The Guatemalan government confirmed that the prosecutor’s office contacted Paxton without going through the diplomatic protocols required for international collaboration.

Paxton's office and Guatemala's prosecutor's office did not respond for a request for comment and more information on the case.

The Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office's communication department said Friday that it would not go into details because the case was “related to children and adolescents.”

Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras has faced international criticism for years and has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for purported undemocratic actions. Since Guatemalans elected reform-oriented President Bernardo Arévalo last August, Porras has grown increasingly isolated and her office has attempted to find allies among some far-right U.S. lawmakers.

Both Pineda and Curruchiche are sanctioned and banned from entering more than 40 countries, including the United States and the European Union, for hindering the fight against corruption in Guatemala and undermining the country's democracy. This notably includes failed efforts to prevent Arévalo from taking office earlier this year.

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Associated Press correspondent Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City.

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