Mexican drug cartels pay to Americans to count on contraband weapons across the border, show intelligence documents

See the News reports DOCUMAR “ARMG Cartels: Within the Mexican-American weapons range networks” in the previous video player.

Mexican drug cartels have been smuggling a vast arsenal of military degree weapons of the United States with the help of US citizens, a News reports The investigation has found.

American documents and interviews exclusively with half a dozen current and previous officials reveal that the US government has known for years, but, according to the sources, it is recently done to stop these arms trafficking networks within the United States, which move to a million firearms through the border, including minigens and grenades.

Dozens of poster weapons rank networks, which operate as terrorist cells, pay Americans to buy weapons of weapons and online distributors throughout the country, as north as Wisconsin and even Alaska, according to intelligence sources in the United States. Firearms are sent across the southwest border through a chain of corridors and mails.

When News themezone pressed the Department of Justice about its findings, a senior official confirmed that “we absolutely recognize the problem here that … most of trafficked firearms to Mexican posters comes from the United States.”

For more than 50 years, the United States government has fought a failed war against drug traffickers, who are now feeding a mortal fentanyl epidemic. The free flow of American weapons on the southern border allows posters to protect their drug operations and overcome Mexican authorities, US officials said.

“We have allowed the posters to accumulate an army,” said Chris De Demiin, who served as a Senior Special Agent in the Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the ATF, until 2021.

Demlein directed the first interagence intelligence project aimed at identifying and dismantling international weapons supply chains in the United States to the United States after its launch on July 25, 2018, the initiative, known as the Thor Project, connected the points between hundreds of cases of application of the disparate law, discovering vast networks that provide these criminal groups to demand access to the American weapons. They informed hundreds of government officials about their discoveries, including the National Security Council and the Leadership of the Department of Justice of Surf.

The Thor project discovered that the problem smuggling of the poster was much worse than was previously understood. They estimated that the posters were trafficking between 250,000 and 1 million weapons each year, with a retail value of up to $ 500 million, not including tactical ammunition and supplies, according to the intelligence analysis reviewed by News themezone.

The Thor project concluded that US weapons were being used to feed an unprecedented increase in violence throughout Mexico. Up to 85% of firearms found in those crime scenes tracked to the United States

Without the Thor project, the application of American law “Bureaucracies were more interested in defending their grass than to prosecute criminal organizations,” said Edwin Starr, who retired from ATF as a special senior agent in December 2022.

On December 8, 2021, the head of the Cabinet of the ATF, Daniel, the Board of Daniel praised the “Insight, the initiative and the hard work” of the Thor project, while presenting the team the distinguished service medal of the agency.

But the Thor project was denied the financing of fiscal year 2022, according to internal documents and sources with direct knowledge, effectively closing it. The Department of Justice and ATF did not reveal how much money is dedicated to the mission of counteracting international firearms traffic to Mexico.

In the course of four months in 2023, News themezone repeatedly The Department of Justice asked about his efforts to combat international arms traffic. When the senior officials finally agreed to speak, they said that “they were not familiar with the Thor project, even when they agreed with their findings about the magnitude of the poster weapon racing operations on the US soil.

The Biden Administration pointed out a new commitment to address the problem at a press conference on June 14, pointing out the operation of the ATF in the southern direction, a “national initiative” of investigation and prosecution designed to “interrupt the traffic of firearms from the United States to Mexico” focused on border states. The authorities also pointed out funds for arms tracking and continuous diplomatic efforts to train and equip the application of Mexican law with that technology.

However, other police officers, intelligence and diplomats told News themezone that doubt the commitment of their own agencies to dismantle poster gun networks in the United States, and criticized continuous approaches as “ineffective.”

“Any strategy of the United States that depends, for its success, in the efforts of application of the Mexican Law in Mexico is condemned to failure,” said Christopher Landau, who served as ambassador of the United States in Mexico until 2021. “We have been talking about this for 10, 20 years. Nothing is changing … This has been a great bipartisan insufficiency of the United States government for many decades.”

The senior officials defended their approach to counteract the smuggling of weapons outside the country.

“ATF is committed to preventing as many weapons as possible illegally in Mexico,” said ATF director Steven Dettelbach to News themezone in a statement, promoting the prosecution of 100 people in the last year. “Investigating straw buyers is just a tool that we use. Our efforts also include complex research, in the long term, entire traffic networks.”

Neither the Department of Justice nor ATF provided evidence to demonstrate that their efforts have significantly reduced the flow of US firearms to Mexico. The United States Police seized 1,720 firearms in the first six months of fiscal year 2023. According to the attached attorney Lisa Monaco, speaking at a press conference in June, “that is an increase of more than 65% during the same period last year.” But it represents less than 1% of all smuggling firearms across the border, depending on the estimates of the Thor project and the Mexican government.

Adam Yamaguchi and Sarah Metz contributed to this report.

In:
• Alcohol, tobacco office, firearms and explosives
• Drug posters
• Drug traffic
• Mexico
• Guns
• Border between us-Mexico
• Customs and border protection of the USA.