Note: this is a major story. problems include "without paperwork"
"Grenades, plastic explosives and rocket launchers in bulk" It would
seem that nothing is stolen.
"That's why the ATF launched Project Gunrunner in April 2005."
Arizona a growing gun smuggling route to Mexico
Sean Holstege
The Arizona Republic
May. 24, 2007 08:25 PM
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
last 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 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Last week, 22 people died near the Sonora mining town of Cananea.
Drug smugglers executed 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 ATF to make it a top priority to curb gun running in the
southwest. And it's 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."
Cartel operatives flood Arizona to buy semi-automatic 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 gun runners 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 semi-automatic 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's 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 another 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.
ATF cannot provide numbers on how many guns get sold illegally or
where they go, due to changes in federal law. 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
on their behalf. In one case, Mexican gun runners repeatedly hired
people staying at a homeless shelter, undercover investigators said.
Gun runners smuggle weapons from Arizona into Mexico the same day
they are purchased.
Just to make sure the weapons get through, gun runners often bribe
Mexican border agents, who guarantee the smuggler is waved through
the inspection booth.
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 suspected gun runner 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 suspected smuggler had
entered the United State 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 says.
That's why the ATF launched Project Gunrunner in April 2005.
Project Gunrunner joins 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 Gunrunner is improved cooperation with Mexican
authorities. Newell says he's 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 imminentthreats or crimes.
Four days after the Cananea slaughter, Newell met in Phoenix with the
Sonora attorney general and discussed more ways 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, kill indiscriminately and strike
fear into everybody's hearts."
Contact the reporter at sean.holstege@arizonarepublic.com.
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