The Mexican safety forces monitoring Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes – the chief of a perilous drug cartel that has been a most sensible motive force of violence in Mexico and narcotic dependancy in The us – idea they in spite of everything had him cornered on Might 1, 2015.
4 helicopters sporting an arrest group whirled over the mountains close to Mexico’s southwestern coast towards Cervantes’ compound within the the city of Villa Purificación, the center of the notorious Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel.
Because the lead helicopter pulled inside vary, bullets from a truck-mounted, military-grade device gun at the flooring struck the engine. Sooner than it reached the bottom, the large helicopter used to be hit by way of a couple of rocket-powered grenades.
This .50-caliber cartridge used to be discovered caught within the truck-mounted Browning M2HB device gun that the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel used to wreck a Mexican Safety Forces Tremendous Cougar helicopter.
ATF
4 squaddies from Mexico’s Secretariat of Nationwide Protection have been killed within the crash. 3 extra squaddies have been killed within the firefight that adopted, and some other 12 have been injured.
The engagement used to be the primary recognized incident of a cartel capturing down an army airplane in Mexico. The cartel’s retaliation for the tried arrest used to be swift and brutal. It set hearth to vans, buses, banks, fuel stations and companies. The distractions labored. Cervantes, sometimes called “El Mencho,” escaped.
The Browning device gun that took down the helicopter used to be traced to a prison firearm acquire in Oregon made by way of a U.S. citizen. And a Barrett .50-caliber rifle used within the ambush used to be traced to a sale in a U.S. gun store in Texas 4½ years sooner than.
Many military-grade guns like those are trafficked into Mexico from the U.S. every yr, aided by way of free requirements for firearm sellers and gun rules that prefer illicit gross sales.
We – a professor of financial building who has been monitoring gun trafficking for greater than 10 years, and an investigative journalist – spent a yr sifting thru paperwork to seek out the quantity, origins and traits of guns flowing from the U.S. to Mexico.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – the company referred to as ATF tasked with regulating the trade – publishes the selection of U.S. weapons seized in Mexico and traced again to U.S. sellers, however it doesn’t supply an legitimate trafficking estimate. The 2003 Tiahrt Amendments bar the ATF from making a database of firearm gross sales and restrict federal companies from sharing detailed hint information outdoor of legislation enforcement.
To estimate guns drift, we accrued trafficking estimates, together with leaked information, earlier analysis, firearm production totals and the ATF hint information.
The type we generated gave us a conservative heart estimate: About 135,000 firearms have been trafficked around the border in 2022. By contrast, Ukraine, engaged in a battle with Russia, won 40,000 small palms from the US between January 2020 and April 2024 – a median of 9,000 in line with yr.
Our research additionally discovered:
This drift of guns is hooked up to the drug business within the U.S. and allows greater gang violence in Mexico, inflicting extra folks to escape around the border.
An building up in weapons trafficked to Mexico from the U.S. pertains to an building up in Mexico’s murder fee.
Extra of essentially the most harmful guns come from impartial gun sellers as opposed to massive chain retail outlets – 16 instances as many assault-style guns and 60 instances as many sniper rifles.
The trafficking drift drives an palms race between criminals and Mexican legislation enforcement; the U.S. gun trade income on gross sales to each.
ATF oversight of sellers reduces the possibility their weapons are resold at the illicit marketplace.
Following the drift
Since 2008, the U.S. has spent greater than US$3 billion to lend a hand stabilize Mexico in the course of the rule of legislation and stem its surges of maximum violence, a lot of it dedicated with U.S. firearms. Many systems are funded in the course of the U.S. State Division, which is dealing with finances cuts, and the U.S. Company for World Construction, which has sustained deep cuts.
In the meantime, the gun trade and its supporters have undercut those efforts by way of combating measures to keep an eye on gun gross sales.
From 2015-2023, 185,000 weapons connected to crimes in Mexico have been despatched to the ATF to be traced – the method of the use of a firearm’s serial quantity and different traits to spot the path of gun possession. About 125,000 of the ones guns had been traced again to the U.S.
Our analyses display that U.S.-Mexico firearms trafficking has dire implications for unusual Mexicans – and that U.S. regulatory movements may have a huge affect. This provides to a rising frame of analysis tying U.S.-sold weapons to Mexico-based gangs and cartels, unlawful drug trafficking, murder charges, corruption of Mexican officers, illicit monetary transactions and migration developments.
Oregon weapons tied to cartel
The Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel is poised to be the largest participant within the drug cartel sport. El Mencho, nonetheless at massive, is among the maximum tough folks directing the drift of heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamines into the US, whilst orchestrating campaigns of concern, intimidation and displacement in Mexico.
The Browning .50-caliber rifle that aided El Mencho’s evasion in 2015 used to be manufactured by way of an organization founded in Morgan, Utah, and legally bought to Erik Flores Elortegui, a U.S. citizen.
Elortegui fled the rustic after he used to be indicted in Oregon for smuggling weapons into Mexico and is now on the most sensible of the ATF’s maximum sought after listing. He wasn’t on my own in his gunrunning schemes. Consistent with a grand jury indictment, Elortegui bought 20 firearms thru an partner, Robert Allen Cummins, in 2013 and 2014. Cummins used to be straw buying – purchasing guns below his title for Elortegui.
Two of the .50-caliber guns that Cummins bought for Elortegui – the lengthy rifles at the proper – have been amongst the ones later recovered from a tractor trailer in Sonora, Mexico. USA v. Robert Allen Cummins.
USA v. Robert Allen Cummins
Sooner than she gave Cummins a 40-month jail sentence in 2017, Pass judgement on Ann Aiken admonished him for the ache and struggling his guns have been most likely going to motive. She informed him to learn “Dreamland,” which chronicles The us’s opioid disaster and its connection to Mexican drug cartels.
Weapons and violence
In 2021 the ATF teamed up with teachers to provide the Nationwide Firearms Trade and Trafficking Overview. It confirmed that the percentage of firearms trafficked to Mexico, already the highest marketplace for unlawful U.S.-to-foreign gun switch, greater by way of 20% from 2017 to 2021.
Gun gross sales are strictly regulated inside Mexico. However homicides have risen to nerve-racking heights – thrice that of the U.S. – for the reason that lapse of the U.S. attack guns ban in 2004. Analysis suggests the 2 are connected.
After their mom used to be killed by way of arranged crime 5 years in the past, Emylce Ines Espinoza-Alarcon’s sister’s circle of relatives migrated to the States, she stated.
Espinoza-Alarcon, her kids and different kinfolk have been extra not too long ago pushed from their houses by way of violence. “As a parent, you try to flee to a different place where they might be safe,” Espinoza-Alarcon stated. She stated she believes American guns are responsible, however there “is nowhere else for us to go.”
Emylce Ines Espinoza-Alarcon holds her infant as she listens whilst her aunt, Alicia Zomora-Guevara, entrance, describes the cartel assault on her the city that compelled their households into exile. Zomora-Guevara’s son, Kevin Jait Alarcon-Zamora, stands to the best, and Espinoza-Alarcon’s son and teen daughter sit down at the Mexico Town resort room mattress in entrance of her.
Sean Campbell, CC BY-ND
A 2023 survey discovered that 88% of the 180,000 Mexican migrants to the U.S. that yr have been fleeing violence – a turn from 2017 when maximum have been coming for financial alternative.
The ATF’s enforcement
ATF inspections stay illicit weapons in take a look at, our research presentations.
The company’s number one enforcement equipment are inspections, violations experiences, caution letters and conferences, and, when inspectors to find violations which might be reckless or willfully endanger the general public, revocation notices.
However the bureau’s 2025 congressional finances request issues out that it will want 1,509 box investigators to achieve its objective of analyzing every broker once or more each 3 years.
In the meantime, the ATF introduced in April 2025 that it used to be repealing the revocation coverage and reviewing contemporary laws, together with person who clarifies when a gun is a rifle. The webpage record revocations, together with detailed experiences, used to be additionally got rid of from the ATF web page.
It is a condensed model. To be informed extra in regards to the connections between U.S. gun gross sales, U.S. rules, Mexican drug cartels and migration, learn the whole investigation
