DHS Chief Napolitano – “U.S. to crack down on gun smuggling”

DHS Chief Napolitano – “U.S. to crack down on gun smuggling”

Posted on Jan 30, 2009 in Narco Wars by PMC Comments Off

It’s about damned time!
The country’s new homeland security chief said Friday that the Obama administration is mapping out a crackdown on the flow of firearms smuggled to Mexico’s murderous drug gangs operating along the Texas border.

Janet Napolitano said she had directed the Customs and Border Protection service “to find guns going south and interdict them.” Additionally, the homeland security secretary said she will give Mexican authorities access to a government database to trace the U.S. origin of seized weapons.

U.S. and Mexican officials have been investigating organizations in Houston and elsewhere believed to have smuggled large numbers of weapons into Mexico. On Friday, a second man pleaded guilty in Federal Court in Houston to illegally purchasing military-style weapons that ended up with Mexican drug cartels.

“A growing wave of criminal violence in Mexico’s border communities and in the interior of the country, fueled by the availability of guns and currency smuggled south from the U.S., poses a serious threat to Mexico’s security,” Napolitano said, “and portends deepening problems for our nation’s border regions.”

Assault rifles

Napolitano, a former federal prosecutor, battled gun runners while serving as governor of Arizona. She said she had stepped up discussions with officials of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Mexican law enforcement to combat U.S.-based gun smuggling, which enables Mexican drug lords to outfit their paramilitary gunmen with assault-style weapons.

Guns bought in the U.S. that end up in Mexico have become an irritant in bilateral relations.

President Barack Obama promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a pre-inauguration summit in Washington on Jan. 13 to take stronger action against gun running.

Calderon is waging a relentless offensive against Mexican drug gangs that are threatening his nation, deploying some 30,000 security forces into northern Mexico More than 5,400 civilians, drug operatives and security forces were killed in Mexico last year. About 90 percent of the 28,000 weapons seized from drug gangs over the last two years originated in the United States.

Napolitano said she was working to give law enforcement agencies in northern Mexico immediate access to the ATF database known as E-Trace. The ATF, a branch of the Justice Department, already has installed E-Trace technology at nine U.S. consulates in Mexico to provide points of access.

Napolitano said expanding access to the database would allow U.S. authorities to analyze patterns of weapons flow and bring prosecutions.

She said that she had not “thought about” the possibility of asking Congress to restore a decade-long federal ban on assault-style weapons that expired in 2004 under the Bush administration.

ATF official William McMahon told the Houston Chronicle in December that his agency had not assessed whether expiration of the assault weapons ban in the United States in 2004 had played a part in the flow of U.S.-bought weapons into the hands of drug cartels.

ATF says it has boosted efforts to alert more than 3,700 federally licensed firearms dealers near the border to spot the U.S. citizens serving as straw weapons buyers who can make up to $100 a weapon for purchasing firearms for drug cartels.

ATF: Houston man ‘prolific’ gun buyer for cartels

A Houston man has admitted to illegally purchasing military style weapons as federal agents continue their probe into an underground pipeline that gets Houston-bought guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Juan Pablo Gutierrez was a “prolific” purchaser among a group of 23 arms traffickers who bought at least 339 firearms for Mexican organized crime syndicates in 2006 and 2007. At least 40 of the guns were later recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and Guatemala as gangsters wage a protracted war against one another and the Mexican government, the bureau said.

Gutierrez, 24, is to be sentenced in March after pleading guilty in early January to eight charges he lied to Carter’s Country gun store employees about whom the guns were for.

Houston the No. 1 source

According to an affidavit prepared by ATF agent Carla Mayfield, during a 2-month period Gutierrez spent $17,801 — believed to be all in cash — on 20 guns.

A judge ordered 28 weapons, including 10 Bushmasters, which are civilian versions of the M-16, be forfeited to the government.

The ATF contends Houston is the No. 1 origin for weapons later recovered in Mexico.

Taking down Gutierrez stands to be significant, as federal agents have a rare chance to go after higher-ups in the smuggling organization, should they persuade Gutierrez to cooperate.

His attorney could not be reached for comment Friday, and a woman who answered the phone at Gutierrez’s residence said he would have nothing to say.

In December, John Hernandez, 25, also of Houston, pleaded guilty as part of the same investigation.
Hernandez was accused of buying nearly two dozen guns, including one used in an attack that left four police officers and three government secretaries dead in Acapulco, Mexico.

The ATF has been tight-lipped about its probe, but court documents offer a glimpse of the investigation.

After a routine inspection of Carter’s Country records in 2007, “numerous people were identified who had made suspicious purchase of firearms in that each purchased a large number of military firearms,” ATF agent Mayfield stated in the affidavit.

U.S. gun laws under fire

The organizations are known to get their weapons by employing U.S. citizens with no felony convictions so they can pass federal background checks.

The weapons are illegal in Mexico. Still, there were as many as 5,400 gangland murders in Mexico last year.

Much of the mayhem has been unleashed along the U.S.-Mexican border. The Mexican government has repeatedly asked the U.S. government to do more to stop the flow of guns.

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, said Washington should better enforce gun laws and shut down weapons traffickers.

The National Rifle Association objects to any attempt to link Mexico’s problems to U.S. gun laws.

“The root cause is Mexico tolerates a level of lawlessness that most civil societies won’t,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said.

Tags: Operation Gunrunner