More guns and ammo seized heading south at Arizona ports of entry in 2021

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Nearly 6,000 rounds of ammunition addressed to a fictitious name arrived at the door of a Tucson residence in April 2020. The ammunition would pass through several more hands before being smuggled into Mexico.

The two U.S. citizens who received and stored the ammo later told authorities they were hired by someone in Nogales, Sonora, and were paid $40 a box. The records did not say how many boxes there were.

The Tucson residents were eventually charged with smuggling goods from the United States and conspiracy, along with four others involved in the operation that included nearly 30,000 rounds of ammo made for high-powered firearms.

This was one of 39 cases involving weapons being smuggled into Mexico filed in federal courts in Tucson and one in Phoenix in 2021, nearly double any single year going back to 2008 when the statute was first used.

Court records show that many of the smugglers are young adults and U.S. citizens who say they were contacted by someone in Mexico and were often paid a few hundred or few thousand dollars to buy, store or transport weapons.

Cases vary from gun smuggling rings in Tucson that included a half-dozen people to a single person with three 9 mm pistols strapped to their body walking into Sonora through the Nogales port of entry.

One 18-year-old man was arrested walking into Mexico pushing a handcart with 1,400 rounds of 5.56x45 mm ammunition, which fits an AR-15 rifle, hidden inside boxes of laundry detergent and cat litter. After waiving his Miranda rights, he told officers he was recruited by someone in Nogales, Sonora, and was promised $1,500 to transport 3,000 rounds into Mexico, but he couldn’t fit it all in his handcart.

Cases filed in 2021 in Arizona federal courts involved nearly 300,000 rounds of ammunition, about 460 magazines, 830 ammunition links, 37 guns, 57 rifles and 80 parts and accessories, some of which were seized and some that made it out of the country, according to an Arizona Daily Star analysis.

The increase in gun smuggling cases being prosecuted in District of Arizona federal courts corresponds to an increase in weapons seized at southbound ports of entry.

U.S. Customs officials on the Southern Arizona border confiscated 104 rifles and 101 handguns headed into Mexico in 2021, which is much higher than any year in at least a decade, with the next highest being 2012, when officials confiscated 23 rifles and 21 handguns.

As well, U.S. Customs confiscated nearly 95,000 rounds of ammunition and 372 magazines in 2021 that were headed from Arizona to Mexico. Ammunition seizures at the Arizona border saw a dramatic increase in 2020 that continued into 2021.

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More weapons, more seizures

The reasons for the increase are both more incidents of people attempting to smuggle weapons into Mexico and more incidents of law enforcement interceding due to improved technology and increased staffing, leading to more seizures at ports of entry and outside of them, says Scott Brown, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Phoenix.

Experts also say increased coordination between agencies on both sides of the border is leading to a higher number of confiscations.

Financial insecurities in the U.S. exacerbated by the pandemic, and continued violence among cartels in Mexico, who fuel arms trafficking, are a couple reasons weapons smuggling has increased, Brown said.

People hired to buy the firearms in the U.S. often have very nebulous ties to cartels. Those hired to transport the weapons across the border may have a slightly closer tie and often have a history of border crossings, so as to draw less scrutiny.

“The pandemic has brought financial uncertainties to people already struggling to make ends meet,” Brown said. “When an opportunity to make ‘quick’ money presents itself, people are more apt to take risks for a payout. Recruiters are using social media to target young people. Young people tend to think they won’t get caught.”

Experts also agree that a spike in gun sales in the U.S. during the pandemic likely contributed to an increase in guns smuggled into Mexico.

More coordination between agencies

As collaboration between U.S.-based organizations has increased, so has collaboration with the government of Mexico, which officials in both countries say is a significant change.

The U.S. needs to do its part to make sure the Mexican government has the ability to fight cartels, Brown says.

“Mexico has rightfully recognized that as much as we complain about the drugs coming in from Mexico, Mexico has rightly gotten more vocal about the weapons coming from the U.S. into Mexico,” he said. “If we want Mexico to be able to effectively fight the cartels, we have to do our part to make sure that the cartels aren’t out-gunning the Mexican law enforcement and even the Mexican military.”

U.S. Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched partner operations in 2020, Operation Without a Trace and Operation Southbound, targeting gun smuggling individuals and organizations, which has resulted in more interdictions and prosecutions. They also strengthened coordination with the U.S. District Attorney’s Office and Customs and Border Protection in this effort.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced nearly 10,000 firearms in 2020 involved in a crime in Mexico back to U.S. manufacturers. But ammunition is much harder to trace.

The bureau has representatives in other countries, including Mexico, and part of Operation Southbound is to have continual conversations about tracing all firearms as they’re recovered from criminal matters, says Brendan Iber, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix.

“These drug trafficking organizations and cartels, they have to protect their illegal drug trade somehow,” Iber said. “It’s the firearms that help them protect that criminal enterprise that they’re involved in. So we’re trying to make sure those tools don’t get to them in the first place because, unfortunately, bad things happen when the firearms get into those people’s hands.”

U.S. guns fuel Mexican drug trade, illegal immigration

Gun smuggling from the U.S. into Mexico is a problem for both countries, as it fuels illegal drug trade into the U.S. and creates a level of violence in Mexico and beyond that pushes people to flee their homes and seek refuge, oftentimes in the U.S.

While around 200 guns were confiscated at the Southern Arizona border in 2021, the Mexican government estimates that 200,000 firearms are smuggled from the United States each year.

Between 70% and 90% of firearms that the Mexican government recovers from crime scenes are trafficked from the U.S., 15% of which come from Arizona, says Fabián Medina Hernández, chief of staff of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Mexico.

As the incidents of gun seizures increase, so do seizures of dangerous drugs being smuggled into the U.S.

The amount of fentanyl seized at the southern border nationwide increased yearly by 73% in 2020 and more than doubled in 2021. Seizures of methamphetamine also increased, by nearly 30% in 2020 and almost 7% in 2021.

Gun smuggling into Mexico and drug trafficking into the U.S. are all connected, says Rafael Barceló Durazo, consul of Mexico in Tucson. Easy access to guns in the U.S. empowers cartels in Mexico, who smuggle drugs into the U.S., who then have more money for more weapons to continue terrorizing Mexican towns and cities.

“We need to continue coming up with alternatives that have real results so there are less firearms in the hands of criminals,” Barceló said. “If there are a lot of firearms in the hands of criminals, many innocent people are going to continue dying, and many people are going to continue to be displaced, immigrating from their communities because of the level of violence this leads to.”

Bullets outpace guns

The amount of ammunition smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico has overtaken the amount of weapons, according to Mexican officials.

The Mexican government is confiscating more ammunition than weapons, which has been the case for at least six years, says Javier Osorio, professor at the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, who’s been studying organized crime in Mexico for over a decade.

“As the conflict evolved, now all these cartels are pretty much well armed,” he said. “What they need is ammunition. So we see larger imports and that gets reflected in the proportion of seizures the Mexican government is doing, basically the army. Now they’re confiscating more ammunition and magazines and new rifles.”

Recently, there has been a huge increase in ammunition being smuggling into Mexico form the U.S., says Hernández, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Mexico.

He agrees this has to do with organized crime factions in Mexico already having large weapon stockpiles, adding that the majority of ammunition that’s smuggled from Southern Arizona is for weapons meant to cause the maximum amount of damage.

Renewed efforts

After the fatal shooting of three women and six children in La Mora, Sonora, on Nov. 4, 2019, involving ammunition that came from the U.S., some officials said they expected more national-level enforcement initiatives to appear, but experts agree that there have not been any significant regulatory or legal changes.

Apart from more coordination, another thing that has changed is the way the U.S. and Mexican governments are discussing the problem.

High-level officials from the United States and Mexico launched the Bicentennial Framework Binational Group Against Arms Smuggling at the end of January, with both countries committing to increase extraditions, speed up case processing, strengthen patrols on both sides of the border, work together to modernize border inspection technology and to improve information-sharing.

One of the objectives is that officials on both sides of the border confiscate more arms at the border — especially high-powered ones, said the Mexican Foreign Ministry’s Head of North American Affairs Roberto Velasco during the meeting.

The amount of high-powered weapons smuggled into Mexico has only increased in recent years, reflected in the cases filed in Tucson federal court, which include many high-powered rifles and ammunition.

This was at least the second high-level talk on arms smuggling between the two countries since President Joe Biden took office, after such discussions had been suspended under the Trump administration.

The fact that the Mexican government is making arms smuggling a key element of its foreign relations with the U.S. is unprecedented, says Osorio, with the School of Government and Public Policy. But he doesn’t think Mexico’s increased pressure will be enough to get the U.S. to make regulatory change, for a variety of economic, political and cultural reasons.

“The love for guns in this country is everywhere,” he said. “It’s part of the culture. People like it, and people vote for it, and people get elected campaigning on those terms. So why would the U.S. government change its politics and domestic relations? I don’t think so.”

Liability of gun manufacturers

The Mexican government filed a lawsuit last year against some U.S. gun manufacturers, seeking billions in damages, saying they have negligent and irresponsible practices that allow their firearms to wreak havoc in Mexico.

The suit asks for reparations and that the companies put measures in place to stop their guns from getting into the hands of organized criminal groups in Mexico.

While others have attempted to get reparations from U.S. gun manufacturers, they’ve failed because of The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a United States law. It protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products. But this law may not give immunity to the manufacturers when the damage is outside the country.

Numerous U.S. entities filed amicus briefs, on Feb. 3, in support of Mexico, saying the case should not be dismissed on the grounds of that law, including the states of Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon, as well as the District of Columbia.

A similar brief was filed by 30 state, district and county attorneys, including Pima County Attorney Laura Conover. Similar briefs were also filed by Mexican activists, scholars and victims; governments and nongovernmental organizations in Latin American and Caribbean regions; and scholars of international law.

“The drugs Mexican cartels are importing, facilitated and protected by defendants’ guns, cause acute harm in our communities,” says the brief signed by Conover and the other attorneys. “Easy access to defendants’ guns has allowed Mexican cartels to realize their ultimate goal: becoming primary distributors of the opioids that are decimating communities.”