MEXICO, Jan 13 (IPS) – The arrest of a man in South Texas on suspicion of transporting weapons parts to Mexico immediately caught the attention of authorities in both countries. But it is only one thread of the web that continues to become intertwined.
At a meeting between the two countries in early October after leftist President Claudia Sheinbaum took office on October 1, Mexicans complained to the other about gun parts flowing into Mexico through online stores and the U.S. Postal Service.
The host, the Mexican government, has briefed the U.S. government on the issue and requested more steps to control smuggling, including uniform shipping codes to make it easier to identify and seize packages, but so far the U.S. has refused.
Sheinbaum himself emphasized the importance of cooperation to curb human trafficking at customs and borders during a meeting Thursday morning, Jan. 9.
“Just as they are concerned about the flow of drugs from Mexican territory into the United States, we are also concerned about the flow of weapons. “What we are very interested in (along with Trump) is that the arms flow is stopped,” he said.
Mexican drug cartels hire individuals from the United States to ship parts to Mexico and assemble the weapons there, receiving payment in cash or wire transfers on both sides of the border.
In the Texas case, which occurred in December 2023, the defendant sent parts and instructions and paid $3.5 million to evaluate how to assemble 4,300 rifles.
It is a so-called ‘ghost gun’ method that is manufactured with a 3D printer or assembled from parts without serial numbers, making it untraceable.
Eugenio Weigend, a scholar at the Public University of Michigan, with a campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, points out that manufacturing of so-called “miscellaneous weapons,” such as parts, is on the rise.
“They are the problem. Traffickers find many ways to get there. This is a new channel they are using and is one of several options. “It adds another layer to the arms trade and exacerbates the problem of drug trafficking and violence,” he told IPS in Austin, the capital of the border state of Texas.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 does not regulate the shrapnel industry, so even minors or people who have not passed a legal background check in the United States can purchase them.
In recent years, production of these components has grown exponentially in northern countries, with devastating consequences for Mexico.
According to the November report “Under the Gun: Gun Trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean,” published by the nongovernmental Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), transnational criminal organizations frequently change the methods and methods of acquiring weapons and continue to do so. I’m going to do it. Least protected path.
Pieces are components such as the frame and receiver. However, because statistics tend to group entire weapons and their parts together, specific figures for seizures of weapon parts alone are not always released in a disaggregated manner.
lethal mixture
While Mexico supplies drugs to the U.S. trafficking and consumer markets, its northern neighbor supplies weapons to criminal organizations, creating a vicious cycle that has resulted in deaths in both territories.
The number of seizures of cargo to Mexico more than tripled between 2016 and 2023, according to the non-governmental Small Arms Survey (SAS), based in Geneva, Switzerland.
At the same time, half of the weapons seized in Mexico were manufactured in the United States, and nearly a fifth were manufactured in other countries, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
In more than one-sixth of the cases, companies outside the United States produced them, while ATF was unable to determine the country of origin in a similar proportion.
ATF was able to trace half of the products to retail buyers, but was unable to link nearly 50% to a specific buyer. Half were pistols and one third were rifles.
Because ATF only receives weapons captured and delivered in Mexico by federal agencies such as the Attorney General’s Office or the Army, the statistics show clear underreporting. However, seizure by state agencies is excluded.
Texas and Arizona were major sources due to gun stores and trade shows, and these Latin American countries were the main markets. There are more than 3,000 weapons manufacturers operating in the United States, including several component kit producers.
Since 2005, the trend of manufacturing other weapons, which are essentially frames and receivers, has increased, reaching a total of 2.7 million units in 2022. But production fell 36% between then and 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Definition based on partial figures.
Guns enhance the ability of criminal groups to compete for access to U.S. criminal markets, which also affects levels of violence in Mexico.
This has a direct impact on violence in this country of 130 million people. There are more than 30,000 murders in this country every year, most of them by firearms, and more than 100,000 people go missing.
“Most trafficked weapons are acquired by dozens or hundreds of proxy buyers who engage in multiple transactions of small quantities of weapons, and these weapons are typically trafficked across international borders in large, small cargoes using private vehicles. It is impossible to detect and block these shipments,” SAS researcher Matt Schroeder told IPS from his Washington headquarters.
Estimates suggest that between 200,000 and 873,000 firearms are trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico each year, and between 13.5 and 15.5 million unregistered firearms are in circulation in Mexico.
incompetent
Measures put in place by both governments were not sufficient to stop the leak of weapons and fragments.
The two countries have established a high-level security dialogue in 2021 consisting of five groups, including those related to cross-border crime. It is also part of the Bicentennial Framework, a bilateral security initiative that replaces the Merida Initiative, which the United States funded from 2008 to 2021.
The United States has provided $3 billion in assistance to Mexico since 2008 to address crime and violence and strengthen the rule of law, but the desired results have not been achieved.
This can be explained by the same facts identified by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found no specific activities or performance indicators and evaluation plans to achieve the set goals.
In 2021, GAO recommended improving weapons tracking, investigating gangs, and expanding cooperation with Mexican authorities.
That year, Mexico sued eight companies, including six U.S.-based producers, in the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking $10 billion in damages for negligent marketing and illegal arms trafficking.
On the other hand, the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden, who has been in power since January 2020 and is scheduled to hand over to ultraconservative heavyweight Donald Trump on January 20, has tightened federal controls on gun purchases and distribution.
Due to the loophole, ATF has issued provisions to reclassify parts kits to have serial codes in 2022. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit filed by manufacturers of these kits challenging the bill.
Weigend, a scholar, envisioned a complex panorama, especially with Trump’s return to the White House.
“In Mexico, this will continue to be a priority and issue at the border, but in the United States, I am not optimistic that regulations will be passed at the federal level,” he said.
“Perhaps the Mexican government would be more vocal than the U.S., generate more information about the impact of guns in Mexico, conduct more research, and see that (the U.S.) Hispanic population suffers more gun violence. We can emphasize the fact that there is. “More than other groups,” he said.
In fact, President Trump had mixed success on gun control during his first term (2017-2021), strengthening background checks for gun buyers and increasing prosecutions for gun crimes.
However, without enacting stricter laws, production and sales increased in 2020, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and little or no progress has been made in the fight against cross-border human trafficking.
For researcher Schroeder, cross-border human trafficking requires resources to support several areas.
“Significantly reducing this trafficking requires, at a minimum, inspections at ports of entry, significant increases in resources to investigate trafficking schemes, and greater coverage and training of potential sources of weapons within the United States.” he said
Bilateral cooperation was put on hold a day before the inauguration of President Trump, who accused Mexico of being involved in drug trafficking, prompting the Mexican government to request that the arms flow be blocked.
A potential threat is the ATF’s disappearance, which complicates the investigation and tracking of the weapons. Republican senators Lauren Boebert and Eric Burlinson, both outspoken gun enthusiasts, introduced a proposition to that effect on Tuesday, January 7.
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