“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers with the assistance of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents arrested a Salvadoran national on April 4 for assisting or otherwise participating in extrajudicial killings and for willfully misrepresenting this material fact in his immigration application. Roberto Antonio Garay Saravia is a retired military officer from the Salvadoran Armed Forces, who during his active duty was involved in multiple operations, including the El Mozote Massacre, where more than 1,000 civilian adults and children were killed.”  (bold added).

The El Mozote Massacre was a major event in the civil war that raged in El Salvador.  As described by the center on Human Rights at the University of Wahington,

” The massacre of El Mozote was committed during `peration Rescue,’ a counterinsurgency operation spearheaded by the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion in December of 1981 in the department of Morazán in northeastern El Salvador. Over several days, the Salvadoran military killed at least 978 people in El Mozote and surrounding areas, the majority children under 12 years old, in what is considered the largest massacre in contemporary Latin American history. The brutality of the massacre is best described in the words of surviving witnesses themselves. Despite domestic and international denunciation of the massacre, perpetrators of the massacre have avoided accountability for decades.”  (bold added),

KJ