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 News from Around the Americas | May 2007 
Arizona Guns Are Finding Way to Mexico Drug Lords
 Sean Holstege - Arizona Republic
| | ATF Special Agent in Charge William Newell stands with assult rifles that were seized by ATF agents as they were on their way to Mexico and that nation's warring drug cartels. (Pat Shannahan/The Arizona Republic) |
A weapon seized after a drug-war massacre last week at a Mexican border town was sold in Phoenix in another sign that southbound gunrunning and the firepower of drug cartels have accelerated in the past few months.
"There is a war going on on the border between two cartels. What do they need to fight that war? Guns. Where do they get them? From here," said William Newell, special agent in charge of the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Last week, 22 people died near the Sonora mining town of Cananea. Drug smugglers killed four police, fled into the mountains and shot it out with Mexican federal authorities in an ensuing daylong battle. Newell expects the ongoing investigation to reveal that more weapons in the attack were sold in Arizona.
Cananea wasn't the first high-profile spasm of violence in Mexican border lands in which Arizona guns were found. Nor will it be the last. Other cases include the arrest of a cartel assassin and the slaying of a high-ranking intelligence officer.
The violence, and fear that it will spill more onto U.S. soil, has led the ATF to make it a top priority to curb gunrunning in the Southwest. And it has led to unparalleled international cooperation and requests for more.
"With the new administration in Mexico, we have a level of cooperation I have never seen before," Newell said.
It's a shared problem, not just Mexico's. Often, guns smuggled south are used to smuggle drugs and people north.
"If that gun ends up in Mexico, it comes right back to you," Newell said. "It's a significant problem."
Easy to buy cheap guns
Cartel operatives flood Arizona to buy semiautomatic assault rifles, grenades, plastic explosives and rocket launchers in bulk. All are used to fight rival drug smugglers and the Mexican government, according to U.S. court records and criminal investigation reports.
"These are the same weapons you see on the battlefields of Iraq," ATF Special Agent Tom Mangan said. "The violence on the border has escalated in the last six months, and the number of weapons recovered from Arizona has escalated, our investigations show."
Mexican gunrunners exploit loopholes in state gun laws and capitalize on the strictness in Mexico. Guns claim triple the price in Mexico as in the United States because the permits there cost about $1,500 and require the holder to surrender rights against search and seizure.
The expiration in 2004 of the U.S. federal assault-weapons ban left some states, including Arizona and Texas, with no prohibition against buying an unlimited number of semiautomatic rifles at once without paperwork. Federal law requires licensed dealers to report multiple sales of handguns but not rifles.
Anyone allowed to buy a gun can sell it, as long as the buyer isn't known to be a felon or otherwise precluded from buying a gun. By law, the seller can't seek a living from such sales. So, at Arizona gun shows, it is common to see vendors describe large volumes of guns as private collections. These are unlicensed dealers.
In nine ATF investigations of unlicensed dealers last year, agents seized 687 firearms and $45,000 in cash. Investigators found evidence that an additional 2,300 guns were sold, and they found one receipt for $150,000. One of the local dealers had been selling guns for 20 years without a license.
Because of changes in federal law, the ATF cannot provide numbers on how many guns get sold illegally or where they go. But Newell estimates that about half of those sold in Arizona wind up in Mexico, a quarter find their way to street gangs in California, where the laws are stricter, and a quarter stay with local Arizona criminals.
Smugglers will pay U.S. citizens $50 to $100 per gun to buy weapons in their behalf. In one case, Mexican gunrunners repeatedly hired people staying at a homeless shelter, undercover investigators said.
Gunrunners smuggle weapons from Arizona into Mexico the same day they are purchased.
Just to make sure the weapons get through, gunrunners often bribe Mexican border agents, who guarantee the smuggler is waved through the inspection booth.
Gunrunning on the rise
Mexican officials say they seized 8,200 weapons in the first six months of 2006. That's a sharp increase from the 10,600 for all of 2005. In 2003, the last year the U.S. assault-weapon ban was in place, Mexican authorities seized 3,100 guns. The vast majority came from the United States, Mexican authorities reported.
"It's one or two people with four or five guns at a time, but it's every day, all day," Newell said.
In one case from January, a gunrunner suspect told investigators he had taken 20 loads of weapons into Mexico over two months, according to an ATF agent's affidavit.
Another affidavit reported that another smuggling suspect had entered the United States at Nogales 10 times in a month in 2004.
Mangan and other federal agents say the cartels use the same routes and methods to smuggle guns, people, drugs and dirty money.
"These same assassins and paramilitaries we see killing in Mexico cross freely into this country to protect those loads," Mangan said.
That's why the ATF launched Project Gunrunner in April 2005.
Project Gunrunner links Newell's field office with those in Los Angeles, Houston and Dallas to investigate and break up straw purchases, corrupt dealers and known trafficking rings. Forty extra agents are expected in the region over the next year to help the pursuit. In Arizona, the emphasis means a new ATF office in Yuma. Statewide, Newell has 24 agents devoted to the effort.
Another key part of the project is improved cooperation with Mexican authorities. Newell says he has seen the most serious commitment in Mexico to tackling the gun and drug problem in his nearly 20-year career. That is leading to Mexican and U.S. law enforcers quickly sharing information about immediate or imminent threats or crimes.
Four days after the Cananea slaughter, Newell met in Phoenix with the Sonora attorney general and discussed more ways the ATF can help train, support and share intelligence with Mexican agencies.
"The level of violence I am seeing in Mexico today, especially along the border states, is eerily familiar to what I saw in Colombia with the Cali cartel in the heyday of Pablo Escobar," said Newell, who was stationed in Colombia in the mid 1990s. "In Cananea, we had armed bandits take over an entire town." |
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