U.S. and Mexico enter an agreement to tackle arms at border

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat TY Steve San Diego Union Tribune

“Operation Frozen” will attempt to curb illegal gun trafficking from the United States into Mexico. 

The U.S. and Mexico have agreed to jointly tackle arms trafficking, naming the San Diego-Tijuana border crossing as one of five main ports where resources should be focused to stem the southbound flow of illegal guns.

Dubbed “Operation Frozen,” the new joint effort was first discussed in a telephone conversation Saturday between Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and President Donald Trump, according to Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who released the information on Twitter.

The agreement comes after last week’s failed attempt to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, who faces a U.S. extradition request and is the son of the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The elder Guzmán is serving a life sentence in the U.S., and his 28-year-old son has stepped into a leadership role in the organization since his capture.

After the son’s arrest last week, Mexican security forces were outgunned and outnumbered as cartel militia seized control of the northwestern city of Culiacán, lighting tires and trucks on fire, taking security officers hostage and blocking roads. Before night fell, the country’s president agreed to release the younger Guzmán to prevent further violence.

The majority of the guns used to subdue the Mexican security forces, compelling the release of Guzmán, likely came from the U.S., according to law enforcement and government officials on both sides of the border.

López Obrador told Trump “he was very concerned” that cartel gunmen used .50 caliber, armor-piercing rifles during the breakout of violence in Sinaloa’s captial, according to Reuters.

Operation Frozen will attempt to curb illegal gun trafficking from the United States into Mexico by using detection technology at key ports, including the San Ysidro Port of Entry, according to a statement released by Mexico’s Public Security Secretariat.

The other border crossings where both federal governments will focus resources and technology are all in Texas: El Paso-Ciudad Juarez; Laredo-Nuevo Laredo; McAllen-Reynosa; and Brownsville-Matamoros.

Though details about how the operation will be carried out remain unclear, the two countries have agreed to meet every 15 days to review the operations, according to Mexico’s federal law enforcement agency.

Ebrard told reporters this week that plans include installing advanced lasers, X-rays and metal detectors capable of detecting chemical products at southbound ports, according to Reuters.

In San Diego, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said he did not yet have any details about the deal reached at a presidential level over the weekend. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for more information.

Southbound travelers are not typically stopped at the border, although CBP has been experimenting at some ports with facial recognition and biometrics to track people leaving the U.S.

CBP also conducts spotty outbound operations as part of its law enforcement mission, mostly to track guns, drugs and money flowing south.

The border crossing has been undergoing a major expansion, which includes the construction of a CBP inspection canopy for southbound inspections.

One weekday last month, southbound pedestrian traffic at the El Chaparral border crossing was rerouted into the CBP facility where an officer verbally asked travelers if they were carrying any arms into Mexico. It remains unclear if the questioning was a precursor to Operation Frozen.

U.S. authorities have agreed to “confront transnational weapons trafficking in a serious way,” according to Ebrard.

Mexico’s Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo, Ebrard and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau, met Monday to hammer out the details of the accord, according to a statement released by Landau.

The governments are discussing increasing the number of Mexican intelligence agents in the United States and targeting the shell companies of criminal organizations in Mexico, according to national news reports. They also plan to investigate U.S. service members and police officers allegedly involved in gun trafficking, according to Ebrard.

In a message posted to Twitter on Monday, Landau said part of the problem is that there are “too many governmental agencies involved in the issue.”

“Starting today, we’re getting rid of the bureaucracy,” he wrote.

The exact number of firearms trafficked to Mexico is unknown, but researchers at the University of San Diego estimated that more than 750,000 guns were purchased in the United States between 2010 and 2012 to be smuggled into Mexico.

Data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show that of 132,823 guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico from 2009 to 2018, some 70 percent were found to have originated in the U.S.

Ebrard has been pushing for greater control on arms entering Mexico, bringing up the topic any time the U.S. calls for greater efforts from Mexico on immigration or illicit drugs entering the United States.

According to Mexico’s Department of Exterior Relations, Mexican authorities seized 98,654 weapons at crime scenes between the fiscal 2012 and 2017, of which 69,140 were traced by ATF as having a U.S. origin.

The Sinaloa Cartel issued a press release Tuesday about its involvement in the violence in Culiacán, apologizing to citizens for their role in the Oct. 17 siege, which left at least eight people dead — but also largely placing blame on Mexico’s government.

wendy.fry@sduniontribune.com