Thread: Mexican Drug Wars Are Fought With U.S. Weapons

Mexican Drug Wars Are Fought With U.S. Weapons
By RICHARD A. SERRANO | Los Angeles Times
August 10, 2008
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. - — High-powered automatic weapons and ammunition are flowing virtually unchecked from border states into Mexico, fueling a war among drug traffickers, the army and police that has left thousands dead, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

The munitions are hidden under trucks and stashed in the trunks of cars, or brazenly concealed under the clothing of pedestrians who walk across the international bridges. They are showing up in seizures and in the aftermath of shoot-outs between the cartels and police in Mexico.

More than 90 percent of guns seized at the border or after raids and shootings in Mexico have been traced to the United States, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Last year, 2,455 weapons traces requested by Mexico showed that guns had been purchased in the United States, according to ATF. Texas, Arizona and California accounted for 1,803 of the traces submitted by Mexican authorities.

No one is sure how many U.S.-purchased guns have made their way to Mexico, but U.S. authorities estimate the number in the thousands.



The body count, meanwhile, is rising. Since a military-led crackdown on narcotics traffickers began 18 months ago, more than 4,000 people in Mexico have died from drug-related violence, including 450 police officers, soldiers and prosecutors, as well as innocent bystanders, cartel members and corrupt officials, according to Mexican government officials.

Tom Mangan, a senior ATF special agent in Arizona, compared the flow to reverse osmosis. "Just like the drugs that head north, [firearms move south]," he said. "The cartels are outfitting an army."

More than 6,700 licensed gun dealers have set up shop within a short drive of the 2,000-mile border, from the gulf coast of Texas to San Diego — which amounts to more than three dealers for every mile of border territory. Law enforcement has come to call the region an "iron river of guns."

And while U.S. political leaders and presidential candidates have focused rhetoric, money and time on stemming the northward flow of drugs and illegal immigrants, far less has been said and done about arms flowing south, largely from states with liberal gun laws, into a nation where only police and the military legally may own a firearm.

Mexican authorities have been pressing the United States to do more to help a border force they describe as overwhelmed and often intimidated.

"Just guarantee me that arms won't enter Mexico," Mexico's public safety chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, told a radio interviewer recently. Stop the flow of guns from the U.S., he said, "and the gasoline for the crimes that we have will run out."

Both sides blame so-called "straw buyers" who purchase weapons for traffickers at small gun shops and large gun shows.

Adan Rodriguez, 35, a struggling carpet-layer from the Dallas area, told dealers he was a private security officer, and bought more than 100 assault rifles, 9-mm handguns and other high-powered weapons at multiple shops over several months, according to court records. But authorities say traffickers were giving him stacks of cash to buy the guns, with marijuana laced in between the bills. He earned about $30 to $40 a gun, according to court records.

"The temptation got over me," Rodriguez told a federal judge in Dallas, who sentenced him in 2006 to 5 1/2 years in prison.

Last August, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents in Roma, Texas, came upon a 1999 Freightliner tractor-trailer with a hidden stash of weapons, including a rifle, four shotguns, a handgun and 8,024 rounds of live ammunition with 10 magazines. The driver was questioned, and that investigation continues.

In February, five men, including a father and his two sons, were arrested just outside Roma, and charged with selling as many as 60 guns, silencers and other weapons. Government evidence showed that the serial numbers on some of the weapons had been shaved off, a sign to agents the firearms were destined for Mexican gangs.

More recently, ATF seized 13 AK-47 rifles Aug. 1 from an alleged straw purchaser in Phoenix, according to Mangan. The guns were to be delivered to the Tijuana cartel, via southern California, Mangan said.

Despite the arrests, smugglers appear to have the upper hand, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement sources say. Just 100 U.S. firearms agents and 35 inspectors patrol the vast border region seeking out gun smugglers, in contrast to 16,000 Border Patrol agents, most of them working the Southwest Border.

Elias Bazan, a supervisory agent with ATF in Laredo, Texas, has a staff of just six agents at one of the grittiest stretches along the Rio Grande.

"I don't have an analyst," he said. "I don't have an administrative assistant. I don't have an inspector. One major case can soak up my entire office. And we have major cases all the time."

Gun dealers also far outnumber agents. Here in tiny Sierra Vista, on a rise high enough to afford a view into Mexico, half a dozen dealers operate in stores on the town's main thoroughfare, and also sell and trade arms out of their homes. Arizona is a wide-open state for gun lovers: a license lets you carry a gun openly on the street or as a concealed weapon.


The U.S. and Mexico are pledging cooperation to halt the weapons flow; but both nations want more from each other. The U.S. is urging Mexican officials to be more vigilant at the border, and to thoroughly inspect and arrest crossers who carry weapons from the United States. They have posted warning signs at the border, but few pay any heed.

William Hoover, the ATF's assistant director for field operations, told Congress his agency is working with Mexican law enforcement officials on an "eTrace" system to track guns found in Mexico. The process allows the U.S. to start criminal investigations against anyone in the U.S. who has sent a weapon to Mexico.

Mexico wants the U.S. to tighten gun laws in border states. They also want more checks on straw man purchasers, such as Rodriguez.

Since weapons began heading south in bulk three to five years ago, U.S. agents have made some key arrests. Unfortunately, many of them came after the weapons had been used in cartel warfare in Mexico.



This spring the ATF arrested a dealer and two others from the X-Caliber Guns store in Phoenix, where hundreds of AK-47s and other long guns and hand pistols allegedly were dispatched to Mexico. The shop since has shut down; the three have pleaded not guilty.

ATF intelligence has shown that some of the firearms sold from X-Caliber were used by cartel gunmen against Mexican police and the Mexican army.

Six guns were traced to alleged members of the Sinaloa cartel who were rounded up shortly after Mexican police captured alleged drug lord Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman in May. An assault rifle traced to X-Caliber also turned up in a cache found after eight federal policemen were killed and three others wounded in another gun battle in Culiacan, according to ATF.

Gun shows have become particularly troublesome. There, traffickers have their choice of weapons: AK-47s, AR-15s and the FN 5.57 caliber pistol known as "Asesino de policia," or "cop killer."

Sometimes, it's the ammunition that tips off agents. In November 2006 an agent in street clothes was talking to a dealer at Kirkpatrick's Guns and Ammo, less than a mile from the border in Laredo. He spotted two men repackaging more than 12,000 rounds of ammunition they had just purchased.

An investigation later led to the arrest of Carlos Alberto Osorio-Castrejon and Ramon Uresti-Careaga, both Mexican citizens in the U.S. illegally. Osorio pleaded guilty to being an illegal immigrant in possession of ammunition and was given 10 months in prison. Uresti was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to 15 months in prison.

The ammo, the judge told Uresti and the court, "was going to somebody in Mexico involved in some illegal activity — drug trafficking, alien smuggling perhaps. Or something else."


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... 2555.story

Good grief