The U.S.-Mexico Border : "The Most Secure in History"

 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) today announced that since January 20, 2025, it has seized 36,277 illegal crime guns and 2,317,999 rounds of ammunition from prohibited persons, gang members, and suppliers for transnational criminal organizations.

4,359 of these seized firearms were bound for Mexico, where they would have been used by violent drug cartels and gangs.  648,975 rounds of the seized ammunition were bound for Mexico, which averages to over 1,600 rounds per day.

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, ATF has led an aggressive nationwide effort to dismantle the domestic and international networks that arm violent criminals.

“Illegal crime guns increasingly originate from every state in the country. This is not a southwest border problem, it is a national threat,” said ATF Deputy Director Robert Cekada. “ATF agents are aggressively targeting gangs, cartels, and transnational criminal organizations that illegally traffic firearms and turn American streets into war zones. We will dismantle these networks at every level, cut off their access to weapons, and hold every criminal fully accountable under the law”.

Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, February 2026

Seized Weaponry, Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice

 

According to authorities in Mexico, up to 500,000 guns from the United States are smuggled through to Mexico on a yearly basis. A figure disputed by a former agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, specializing in covert gun-trafficking networks who hazarded a more likely figure of a million smuggled firearms. This, against a more familiar backdrop of President Trump threatening Mexico over drug smuggling into the United States as his reason for sky-high trade tariffs.

 

President Claudia Sheinbaum has been doing her best to placate her American counterpart and has seen to it that Mexican forces have intensified their crackdown on Mexican drug cartels. While at the same time politely pointing out to Mr. Trump that it is American gunfire flooding Mexico with powerful weaponry that her own police, national guard and military are forced to deal with in their ongoing efforts to try to control drug trafficking. 

 

The United States, it seems, is more interested in what is entering across the border from Mexico to the U.S. than monitoring the reverse flows. While the U.S. focuses on drugs entering and the need to stop the inexhaustible flow, pouring billions of dollars into intelligence, investigation and arrests, the Sinaloa Cartel powerhouse responsible for the bulk of fentanyl pouring through U.S. streets, is facing a multiple-pronged war of its own, against U.S. drug enforcers and other Mexican cartels challenging its primacy.

 

The result has been an explosion of gun-smuggling that arms smugglers in the U.S. are working happily overtime to fulfill the resulting orders. The U.S. plan to use its military to intervene in Mexico could see American soldiers confronted by ruthless Mexican cartel members armed with the latest in American firepower. Weapons that include the like of grenade launchers, machine guns and assault rifles.

 

The weapons are frequently stripped to their parts, concealed inside truck panels, hidden compartments in vehicles and then transported. Private planes can be stuffed with weapons parts, parts lashed to speedboat hulls or drivers stashing weapons in a car trunk. Not completely unaware, in 2020 the U.S. government initiated a federal task force for arms trafficking to be intercepted from the U.S. to Mexico.

 

This infographic was created by the Drug Enforcement Administration's Special Operations Division as a visual representation of intelligence findings, to depict how an American supply chain provides firearms and ammunition to Mexican cartels. Project Thor / Obtained by CBS News

 

According to the ATF, over 4,300 firearms en route to Mexico were seized; representing a fraction of hundreds of thousands of weapons estimated annually to cross into Mexico. Mexico's security minister has asked his counterparts in the U.S. to investigate sources and suppliers of military-grade weapons not available from gun shops. The heavy weaponry that the Sinaloa cartel and Jalisco New Generation arm themselves with are of increasing concern to Mexico. 

 

Pressure from the Trump administration moved Mexico to deploy thousand of National Guardsmen and military forces to Sinaloa state. Highway checkpoints have been increased countrywide. Leading the smuggling cells to shift to air transport with the use of private planes and landing strips, up to the present depended on for drug shipments, and now carrying smuggled weaponry. 

 

From multiple states in the U.S.  a network of trafficking coordinators operate smuggling cells. American  citizens or residents are paid by smugglers to buy firearms from licensed dealers at stores and gun shows. In recruiting individuals to legally procure guns, each buyer is tasked to walk in, buy an AR-15 or a .50-caliber rifle, then hand it off for cash, thank you very much. 

 

Gun store employees, managers and owners are being bribed. Some among them inflate purchase prices for their own profit, collect a 10 percent kickback, and falsify records. Information from past customers are reused to conceal such off-the-books sales. The collected weapons are then assembled in 'safe houses', the disassembled guns moved south in cargo trucks and fishing boats.

 

According to a former A.T.F. agent, firearms are considered a strategic lifeline to major criminal groups in Mexico. "We've put billions into the drug war and a fraction of that into weapons trafficking. If they lose their guns, they lose the war", he explained. Bribes are part of the picture, with payments handed out to U.S. officials, including Customs and Border Protection and others, to take care of interference into illegal shipments.

 

The agency, asked to explain accusations of bribes taken by its agents, stated that C.B.P. agents and officers "enforce our nation's laws along what is now the most secure border in history." 

 

Seized Weaponry, Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice