A Gunfight in Guatemala
A Gunfight in Guatemala
Enrique Degenhart tried to clean up Guatemala’s immigration service. His story is part of a nation’s extraordinary fight against corruption.
by Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica
Illustrations by Christopher Park for ProPublica
June 2, 2016
This story was co-published with Foreign Policy.
Early on the morning of Oct. 31, 2012, Enrique Degenhart Asturias left his home in Guatemala City to drive to his gym for his daily workout.
Tall, bespectacled, and broad-shouldered, the 44-year-old Degenhart wore sweatpants and a T-shirt. Along with his exercise gear, he carried a .40-caliber Glock 22 pistol loaded with high-powered ammunition.
Degenhart had reason to be on guard. He had spent two years trying to clean up Guatemala’s immigration service. After taking the job of director of the notoriously corrupt agency in 2010, he had beefed up internal affairs, modernized technology, and battled criminal networks that sold fraudulent passports to African migrants, Russian fugitives, and Colombian drug traffickers. His reforms had won him a long list of powerful enemies — inside and outside the government — linked to mafias.
But despite his achievements, the new president, Otto Pérez Molina, had fired him in January, ignoring an appeal from the U.S. Embassy to keep him in his post. Pérez Molina’s aides had also taken away his armored car and bodyguards, breaking an agreement to provide security to the former immigration chief. Degenhart felt vulnerable and unsafe. In a land where roads swarm with robbers, carjackers, and hit men on wheels, even a trip to the gym was a potential ride into a kill zone.
At approximately 6:35 a.m., Degenhart’s Porsche Cayenne pulled to a stop behind two cars at an intersection. From there, the next stage in his morning route was to cross an overpass to the Pan-American Highway, which snakes through the verdant hills of Guatemala City. Suddenly, he spotted something in his rearview mirror: a green Mitsubishi Lancer. The four-door sedan approached fast. It swerved to the right past the Cayenne into the parking lot of a corner pharmacy and then swung back and stopped at a hard angle, ready to cut in front of him when traffic resumed.
More:
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-gunfight-in-guatemala
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016159372
