Days after it was revealed that scores of accused gang members had escaped unnoticed from a maximum-security prison, President Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala called for an overhaul of the country’s prison system, where gangs are believed to operate unchecked amid rampant bribery and corruption, and said the United States would provide support.
“We will have the support of the F.B.I. and other United States security agencies, whose experience and technical capacity will strengthen our security systems and make our fight against organized crime more effective,” Mr. Arévalo said in a national address on Wednesday afternoon.
“We are not alone in this fight,” the president added.
The inmates who escaped from Fraijanes II prison, a maximum-security facility outside Guatemala City, were described by officials as high-ranking operatives from the Barrio 18 gang, which has long been linked to organized crime and violence around Central America and which the Trump administration designated as a foreign terrorist organization in late September.
The designation places Barrio 18 on the same list as MS-13, a rival group in neighboring El Salvador, as well as the region’s most powerful drug cartels.
The escape was initially revealed on Sunday by Guatemala’s director of prisons, who said that prison officials had only detected the scheme — in which inmates may have slipped out one by one, or in pairs — after hearing rumors and checking inmates’ biometric data.
The revelation immediately erupted into a political crisis, with the head of prisons dismissed and Guatemalans threatening to protest. On Wednesday, Mr. Arévalo announced that several senior officials — including Interior Minister Francisco Jiménez — would also be replaced.
He outlined plans to overhaul the prison system that included the construction of a maximum-security facility and the introduction of a modernized system for tracking inmates.
“A deep reform of the penitentiary system is now an absolute priority for this government,” he said. “We can no longer allow prisons to be vulnerable spaces where the state loses control.”
Along with revealing the pressure Mr. Arévalo is under, analysts said the president’s message showed how his government is falling into step with the Trump administration, whose priorities for the region — since Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first visit — have focused on security, organized crime and the fight against drug trafficking.
That Mr. Arévalo has been so quick to partner with the Trump administration was somewhat surprising, said Ana María Méndez Dardón, the Central America director at the Washington Office on Latin America, a rights group.
Mr. Arévalo, a moderate who campaigned on an anticorruption platform, was elected in 2023 in a surprise victory that left the country’s conservative establishment reeling.
“U.S.-Guatemala cooperation has had its ups and downs under different administrations,” Ms. Méndez Dardón said. “But this one in particular has pursued some policies — especially on migration and security — that don’t align with Arévalo’s messages in Guatemala: respect for human rights and freedom of expression.”
Guatemala’s high crime rates have been linked to the gangs — so any effort to reign them in should be applauded, especially if it involves the support of the United States, said Ms. Méndez Dardón. “But the approach matters — it should be one focused on citizens’ safety, not national security,” she said.
“This issue of gangs is not necessarily a matter of national security,” she continued. “When it’s framed that way, governments like the U.S. end up involving special forces and the military in tasks that rightly belong to civilian institutions.”
She added: “There’s a risk this could lead Guatemala down the path of El Salvador — where a punitive, authoritarian narrative gains popularity.”
Over the last several years, organized crime has emerged as a top issue for voters across Latin America, many of whom have clamored for a leader like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who rounded up tens of thousands in a crackdown on gangs that succeeded in restoring safety, even as rights groups said that it left innocent people behind bars.
In March, Mr. Trump sent deported migrants to Mr. Bukele’s maximum-security prison for gang members, which appears to have become a model for similar facilities in neighboring countries.
On Wednesday, Guatemala’s president announced the plans for a new maximum-security prison for 2,000 inmates that would be complete in a year.
“There’s no time to lose,” he said.
Jody García contributed reporting from Guatemala City.
Annie Correal reports from the U.S. and Latin America for The Times.
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