Mexico Proposes Binational Team to Share Info Against Trafficking of Arms, Drugs, Humans and Money Laundering

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Proceso

Note: This is an Editorial Piece from Proceso and Does Not necessarily represent the views of any or all here at BB. I am Posting it for the sake of Discussion.

Mexico City, Mx:  The Mexican government proposed that the United States set up a binational team to share information on the trafficking of arms, drugs, money and people across the common border, the head of the Commission said Tuesday. National Security, Renato Sales Heredia.

"Weapons, illegal money, human trafficking and drugs use the same border crossing points. The United States asks that we support its immigration policy, and we support the arms policy, "said the commissioner.

He assured that every day some two thousand firearms arrive in Mexico from the United States, which increases the lethal power of organized crime.

Therefore, he said that it was proposed that the binational team include the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Agency (ATF, for its acronym in English), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in order to share information.

"The United States has the largest number of weapons in the world, has more weapons than inhabitants: more than 300 million weapons, and most of it is concentrated in the states bordering Mexico: California, Arizona, New Mexico and mainly Texas. "

In his participation in the Academic Meeting on the Prevention of Armed Violence and Crimes Related to Firearms, at the Institute for Legal Research (IIJ) of the UNAM, Sales Heredia assured that in the United States "it is much easier to buy a long weapon than a cough syrup: to acquire the cough syrup a medical prescription is required, and for a weapon, nothing ".

In this coincided the assistant attorney for Human Rights, Crime Prevention and Community Services of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR), Sara Irene Herrerias Guerra, who said that the neighborhood with the United States and its lax regulation on weapons generates one of the most complex and priority criminal markets to pursue.

She recalled that, in addition to organized crime, weapons also fall into the hands of common criminals, which means that approximately two out of every three intentional homicides in Mexico are committed with firearms, a proportion that is increasing. "This is the harsh reality that we have to fight," he said.

For her part, the president of the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City, Nashieli Ramírez, said that a comprehensive disarmament program is required.

She recalled that 42.2 percent of the victims of some crime in the country said that their attackers carried a firearm. In the case of Mexico City, the figure rises to 49.1 percent, according to the National Survey of Victimization and Perception of Public Safety.

CAP REPORT: The impact of US arms trafficking to Mexico has been devastating:

 The arms trafficking from the United States to Mexico is one of the main incentives of the violence that plagues the country, taking into account that in 2017 alone 66% of homicides were committed with firearms, according to a specialized report.

"The rampant impact of the arms trade from the United States to Mexico has been devastating," highlights the report titled Beyond Our Borders: how much the weak US laws contribute to violence abroad , prepared by the CAP.

"In 2017, Mexico registered the highest level of homicides committed in the last 20 years, with an average of 20.5 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants. Although these figures are derived in part from high levels of impunity for criminal behavior, access to firearms is one of the factors that has triggered it. In 1997, 15% of homicides were committed with firearms, but in 2017 it increased to 66%, "the report emphasizes.

The statistics presented by the special investigation, as indicated by CAP itself, would be reason why, contrary to what the president of the United States, Donald Trump, says, the Mexican government would have to be willing to promote walling its northern border and thereby trying to contain the US arms trafficking to reduce violence.

From 2014 to 2016, in 15 nations of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, 50,133 weapons confiscated as part of a criminal investigation were exported from the United States.

"Let's put it another way, the US weapons used to commit crimes in nearby countries were used every 31 minutes," says the CAP report.

On average, the United States legally exports some 298,000 weapons each year, and the illegal trafficking facilitated by the weakness of the laws that favor the purchase, use and possession of weapons of all kinds in the American Union, could greatly exceed official statistics, as calculated by the CAP.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF, for its acronym in English), which is the US federal agency in charge of monitoring and regulating the sale of weapons, estimates that each year at least 213,000 are trafficked to Mexico. weapons produced and manufactured in the United States. "Nearly half of the weapons trafficked from the United States and confiscated in Mexico are rifles and semiautomatic pistols such as AK-47, AR-15 and their variants," the report said.

This type of weapons and others of greater caliber and power, are the preferred weapons of criminal groups and drug traffickers.

Citing the Government Office of the Comptroller (GAO, for its acronym in English) under the US federal Congress, the CAP adds that Mexican criminal groups opt for semiautomatic weapons because they very easily turn them into highly lethal and effective automatic weapons. .

"The GAO also reports that from 2009 to 2014, most of the weapons involved in crimes and recovered in Mexico and that were purchased in the United States came from states in the south of this country; 41% from Texas, 19% from California and 15% from Arizona, "says the CAP report.

"From 2014 to 2016, more than 33,000 US weapons involved in criminal acts and investigations were recovered in Mexico, this figure exceeds the number of weapons confiscated in criminal acts committed in several states of the United States," the CAP states.

To contain the problem of violence generated by the export of arms from the United States abroad, the CAP report proposes to institutionalize the universal review of criminal records for the purchase of any weapon.

Also that the United States defines as a federal crime the wholesale purchase and trafficking of arms, that the armories report to the ATF the sales of long weapons, as well as increase the access to the databases on international arms trafficking and, reject the proposals of some organizations and companies to weaken the supervision of arms exports.