Intelligence documents show that Mexican drug gangs drive Americans to smuggle weapons across the border

a witness CBS reports The documentary “Cartels Arming: Inside the Mexican US Weapons Networks” in the video player above.

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Mexican drug gangs were blowing a wide arsenal of military weapons from the United States from the United States with the help of American citizens, a CBS reports I found the investigation.

Sources revealed that US intelligence documents and interviews with half of the current and former officials that the US government knew this for years, but the sources said that he did not do much to stop these weapons trafficking networks inside the United States, which amount to one million gunshots across the border annually, including the mini belt and liberation agencies.

Dozens of Cartel Gunrunning networks, like terrorist cells, pushes Americans to buy weapons from weapons and online merchants across the country, such as the far north such as Wisconsin and even Alaska, according to US intelligence sources. Then firearms are shipped across the southwestern border through a series of brokers and pursers.

when CBS News pressed the Ministry of Justice about its findings, and a senior official stressed that “we are fully aware of the problem here … that the lion’s share is a firearm that is trafficking to the Mexican Cartitals comes from the United States.”

For more than 50 years, the United States government has launched an unsuccessful war on drug dealers, who are now feeding the deadly fentian epidemic. US officials said that the free flow of American rifles across the southern border enables the cartridges to protect drugs and the Mexican authorities that outperformed the assembly.

“We have allowed the charters to collect an army,” said Chris Demlin, who held the position of a special agent in the Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives office – until 2021.

Demielene led the first agency intelligence project aimed at identifying and dismantling the international weapons supply chains throughout the United States within months of its launch on July 25, 2018, the initiative, known as Project Thor, links points between hundreds of different law enforcement, and the detection of huge networks that grant these criminal groups upon the completion of American weapons. Hundreds of government officials have seen their discoveries, including the National Security Council and the chief leadership of the Ministry of Justice.

Project Thor found that the problem of smuggling of the cartel weapons was much worse than he had previously understood. They estimated that the cartridges were running away between 250,000 and 1 million weapons each year, with a retail value of $ 500 million, including ammunition and tactical supplies, according to the intelligence analysis reviewed by CBS News.

Project Thor concluded that American rifles were used to feed an unprecedented height in violence throughout Mexico. Up to 85 % of the firearms in these crime scenes tracked to the United States

Without a bull draft, American law enforcement “The bureaucracy was more interested in defending grass than the trial of criminal organizations,” said Edwin Star, who retired from ATF as a special agent in December 2022. Importary trafficking cases This, according to Dimillin, helped to download an entire lyric network.

On December 8, 2021, ATF Chief of Staff Daniel Al -Majlis praised “Insight Thor, initiative and hard work”, where he provided the team’s distinguished service medal for the agency.

But Project Thor was rejected by the financing of the 2022 fiscal year, according to the effective documents and internal sources that are being closed. The Ministry of Justice and ATF will not reveal the amount of money allocated to the task of facing the international firearms trafficking in Mexico.

Over the course of four months in 2023, CBS News repeatedly The Ministry of Justice asked about its efforts to combat the international arms trafficking. When senior officials finally agreed to speak, they said they were “uncommon” with Project Thor, even when they agreed to their findings about the size of the operations of the Cartel weapons on the land of the United States.

The Biden Administration has indicated a new commitment to address the issue in A press conference on June 14Referring to ATF’s South OperationThe “National Initiative”, the investigation and prosecution of the designed “to disrupt firearms trafficking from the United States to Mexico” that focuses on border countries. The officials also indicated the financing of the continuous weapons tracking and diplomatic efforts to train and equip the enforcement of Mexican law with this technology.

However, other law enforcement officials, intelligence and diplomats told CBS News that they are questioning the commitment of their agencies to dismantle Cartel networks throughout the United States, and criticized the continuous approach as “ineffective.”

“Any American strategy that depends, on its success, on Mexican law enforcement efforts in Mexico, is failed, Christopher Landau, who served as an American ambassador in Mexico until 2021.

Senior officials defended their approach to the face of arms smuggling outside the country.

“ATF is committed to stopping the largest possible number of weapons that it is illegally trafficking to Mexico,” he described as the prosecution of 100 people last year. “The investigation of the straw buyer is just one tool we use. Our efforts also include large -scale, long -term and complex investigations for full trafficking networks.”

The Ministry of Justice or ATF did not provide evidence to prove that their efforts have reduced the flow of US firearms to Mexico. Law enforcement in the United States seized 1720 firearms in the first six months of the fiscal year 2023. According to Deputy Prosecutor Lisa Monaco, speaking at a press conference in June, “This is more than 65 % over the same period last year.” But it represents less than 1 % of all firearms that are smuggled across the border, based on estimates of the project of the bull and the Mexican government.

Adam Yamagucci and

Sarah Metz

He contributed to this report.