He's your typical Los Angeles illegal alien in many ways — a hard-working janitor, nice guy to his girlfriend's children and weekly church-goer. Oh and he's also a convicted death squad participant.

Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos was arrested Wednesday for being an illegal alien and also a member of the Salvadoran military death squad that brutally murdered six priests in 1989 [Janitor's secret past: a death squad, LA Times 10/26/06].

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Guevara Cerritos was one of nine Salvadoran officers and soldiers implicated in one of the most notorious massacres in El Salvador's history: the 1989 death squad murders of six Jesuit priests whom some in the army viewed as subversives.

A sublieutenant with the Atlacatl Battalion during El Salvador's war against the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a leftist guerrilla group, Guevara Cerritos was convicted for his role in the slayings.

Last year he crossed the Arizona desert with the help of a coyote and then settled in a city with more than 250,000 other Salvadoran nationals and immigrants, perhaps not the wisest choice. He attempted to keep a low profile, but was apparently recognized by one of his countrymen and reported to the US government as a war criminal.

In fact, Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos is one of a number of war criminals to live easily in the United States, including the Ethiopian torturer Kelbessa Negewo and Bosnian executioner Marko Boskic. It's all part of the diversity in human rights abusers which open borders afford.