http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3635545.html

Feb. 4, 2006, 12:38AM



ON THE BORDER
Relentless 'trickle' of guns to Mexico taking deadly toll
Massive seizure in Laredo is first success for task force that aims to curb flow of arms
By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

BROWNSVILLE - Drugs go north and guns go south. It's been that way for decades. But now American law enforcement officials have urgent new worries about weapons that are winding up in Mexico.

Underscoring their concerns, U.S. firearms agents earlier this year beefed up their anti-smuggling operations in South Texas. And on Friday, a Homeland Security task force announced its first success: The seizure of a stunning array of weaponry, from assault rifles and silencers to improvised explosive devices, all discovered in the border city of Laredo.

Despite such progress, some U.S. agents say, it's an uphill fight. The flow of weapons to Mexico is relentless and many smugglers are difficult to catch.

In Texas and other border states, illegal arms traders go about their illicit business in unspectacular fashion, making small purchases and blending in with the hoards of legitimate gun buyers.

Stopping them isn't easy because weapons tend to "trickle in" to Mexico, said Eugenio Marquez, the attaché for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Mexico City. They are "not brought in large containers."

''We have an ant trail effect of guns coming in from the United States, and we'll get three or four guns, or six or seven," he said. "We rarely see large shipments."

But the small batches add up, say Mexican officials, who contend that more than 95 percent of weapons used in crimes in their country were purchased in the U.S.


Small loads hard to detect
Most were bought at legal commercial outlets in the U.S. or they were stolen, American agents say. Many were spirited into Mexico in lots of two, three or no more than 10 guns. Agents say smugglers frequently hide weapons in the trunks of some of the millions of automobiles that enter each year.

The loads are often discreet, American agents say, but the firepower appears to be rising.

Mexican officials are recovering more and more U.S.-bought high-caliber weapons, Marquez said.

''In the past year, one trend we've noticed ... is the increase in assault rifles — the AR-15s and M-16s," he said. "In the past, the revolvers and pistols were at the top of the list."

Traffickers frequently dispatch gang members to Texas to acquire guns, said J.J. Ballesteros, head of the U.S. ATF office in Corpus Christi.

''In Nuevo Laredo, there are several drug organizations vying for control, and each one has their private little army," he said. ''They have to keep them in state-of-the-art firearms and ammunition. So they've gone to recruiting people to cross the border into Texas and get as many of these guns as they can."

The toll is deadly, U.S. and Mexican officials say.

The battle for control of key drug corridors along the border claimed hundreds of lives last year, they say.

Ballesteros said he fears the violence will escalate even higher, perhaps reaching levels seen in Colombia.

Without too much trouble, he said, Mexican traffickers could probably obtain military-grade .50-caliber machine guns and armor-piercing rounds.

Or they could take after the Colombians and begin using car bombs to blow up competitors.

''They are fighting at a certain level, and if one side was to escalate to armor-piercing, explosive-round capability, the other side will find a way to get them and use them, too," Ballesteros said. ''There is a lot of stuff out there that's available that can do a lot of carnage."

Mexican officials say they are working closely with U.S. law enforcement authorities to try to stem the flow of weapons.

Guns aren't sold or manufactured in Mexico. They are illegal for the vast majority of the citizenry and permits are scarce.

Yet the demand for weapons is great, not just by criminal gangs but by ranchers and business people.

Smugglers sometimes sell their guns for up to five times as much as they paid for them, agents say.

''We do have a problem of firearms trafficking," said Rafael Laveaga, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington. ''We do address that problem. We do talk to our counterparts in the United States on a daily basis."

Mexican border cities and towns have long faced the problem, said Omeheira Lopez, a Reynosa City Council member and human rights lawyer.

''The problem of guns in Tamaulipas state is very serious," said Lopez, who advocates greater efforts to catch smugglers entering Mexico. Guns are ''very common in the rural areas. There, having a firearm is part of people's heritage and their personal security."


Guns traced to Brownsville
Last year, Mexican authorities asked the ATF to trace assault rifles found at the scene of the homicides of three Mexican police officers, allegedly gunned down by hitmen working for the so-called Gulf cartel in Matamoros.

The guns were traced to two Brownsville men under investigation for alleged gunrunning, ATF officials said.

Two of the $1,100 semiautomatic assault rifles were purchased two weeks before Christmas at Chuck's Gun Shop in Brownsville.

Store owner Chuck Fredieu said the buyer was a young man who had passed the required background check and claimed the second gun was a gift for his father.

The real purchaser was Brownsville resident Gerardo Sosa, 23, federal court records show.

Sosa allegedly obtained 64 weapons from gun shops in the Rio Grande Valley in just a few months, according to court records.

Accused of managing a ring of nine purported ''customers," he allegedly paid them $100 each to buy the guns and claim on firearm forms they were buying the weapons for themselves.

Last month, Sosa was sentenced to four years in prison.

Smugglers are difficult to spot, Fredieu said.

''All I can say is, these people who are in this business, it's hard to detect them all," he said. ''There are a few who get through the cracks, and you try to do your best to weed them out."

Fredieu has posted signs in Spanish warning he does not allow a potential customer to handle or price a weapon without first showing a valid ID. Among smugglers' ploys, he said, is to send customers who know little or nothing about guns into his shop with names of firearms on pieces of paper.

''I say, 'I'm sorry, you need to get the person who wants to buy this gun to come in.' And they don't come back," Fredieu said.

Still, gun smuggling continues.

In the past two years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have snared 798 guns — and more than 111,000 bullets — in random searches of cars entering Mexico at ports of entry from Del Rio to Brownsville.

In August, officers at the Hidalgo International Bridge arrested a Reynosa man who had 8,700 rounds of assault rifle ammunition in the trunk of his car. Also found were 10 bulletproof vests.

Al Pena, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations in South Texas, said his agents are trying to find out if the ammunition was destined for the drug cartels. ''That's not going to a deer camp," he said.

james.pinkerton@chron.com