A shootout in Mexico left 23 dead and led ATF agents to Houston

Gus "P" for Borderland Beat   HoustonChron

The first shot sounded like a transformer exploding.

Narcedalia Padrón Arizpe was at city hall Nov. 30 in Villa Union, the small Mexican border town where she serves as mayor.

Then bullets began hitting the building, ripping chunks of stucco from the walls. They slammed through glass, smashed through computers and left fist-sized holes in windows.

She dove for cover. Outside, a convoy of armored pickups emblazoned with CDN rumbled through the streets. Cartel gunmen, many who looked to be teens, spent hours shooting up the town with high-powered rifles — with an arsenal later connected to a home just south of Houston.

“The whole pueblo convulsed,” Arizpe said. “Everything was perforated.”

State security forces responded hours later. Battles over two days claimed the lives of 17 cartel gunmen, four police officers and two unarmed residents of Villa Union. The attack by the Cartel del Noreste left residents traumatized and fearing for their lives, Arizpe said.

Investigators recovered 27 large-caliber weapons, including six .50-caliber Barrett rifles, 22 vehicles, and bulletproof helmets and vests.

 Law enforcement in the two countries began investigating how American arms ended up fueling a violent gun battle in a town 43 miles across the border. U.S. agents tracked arms connected to the shootout. So far, prosecutors have charged 15 people in Texas in purchases of more than 100 guns suspected of having been trafficked to Mexico.

But experts in Mexico and the U.S. say law enforcement is fighting a losing battle, armed with low-grade charges that are little deterrent against trafficking rings motivated by a lucrative $125 million shadow industry.

The City Hall of Villa Union is riddled with bullet holes after a gunbattle between Mexican security forces and suspected cartel gunmen, Saturday, Nov. 30, 2019.

Two investigations

Five days after the Villa Union shootout, police in Brownsville responded to reports of a business getting shot up, and arrested a man named Victor Camacho. During the arrest, they found four assault-style rifles wrapped in blue painter’s tape, a Glock pistol and a stockpile of high-powered ammunition, including ammo fit for military-grade submachine guns.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents traced the weapons back to Zeroed-in-Armory, a Pearland gun shop owned by 32-year-old man named Khalid Abdulaziz. He ran the business out of a house on Roy Road in Brazoria County, about 13 miles southeast of downtown Houston.

The stop of Camacho led to two investigations: one into the ZIA gun shop and one into how the guns moved across the border.

Mexico has struggled for decades to control drug smuggling, human trafficking and cartel violence. The country has strict gun laws, bans the sale of assault weapons, and has only one store where citizens can legally buy guns.

“You have a largely unregulated market for guns north of the border, and a severely restricted market for guns in Mexico,” said David Shirk, a political science professor at the University of San Diego.

The pipeline of weapons flowing from the U.S. to Mexico arms enables violent cartels and contributes to the nation’s soaring homicide rate.

Citing a 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report on efforts to combat firearms trafficking, Alicia Kerber Palma, Mexico’s Consul General in Houston said about 41 percent of firearms seized in Mexico from 2009-2014 and traced back to the U.S. came from Texas. Many of those weapons are purchased to be used in crimes just across the border, she said, adding that efforts to stop organized crime or drug trafficking would be hobbled without addressing gun smuggling.

Houston sees high numbers of gun trafficking cases, said Fred Milanowski, Special Agent-in-Charge of ATF’s Houston Field Division. Investigators began seeing a spike in trafficking in the Houston region about three years ago, prompting ATF to put a new team together to focus on the problem, Milanowski said.

Last year, members of ATF Houston’s crime gun strike force arrested 143 people and identified more than 1,100 weapons they suspect were trafficked, according to internal numbers provided to the Chronicle.

Traffickers smuggle the weapons in small shipments, which makes stopping the flow of guns more difficult.

“It’s just not difficult to buy firearms in the U.S. and drive across the border pretty much undetected,” said J.J. Ballesteros, a retired ATF agent.

Soldiers escort five alleged members of the Zetas drug gang during their presentation to the press in Mexico City, Thursday, June 9, 2011. More than 200 weapons were seized after the five men were arrested near the city of Villa Union, in Mexico's Coahuila state.

The gun shop

Court records say traffickers bought scores of weapons from the ZIA gunshop.

Israel Chapa Jr. of Houston was a purchaser, and ATF agents said he bought 156 weapons over a six-month period starting in July. One of those — a belt-fed .50 caliber rifle bought by Chapa on Nov. 19 — was later found among Cartel del Noreste weapons by Mexican security forces after the Villa Union shootout.

When investigators found Chapa on Dec. 13, he said he’d sold all of the weapons purchased at ZIA to a man named “Jose.” He later changed his statement to say the majority of the weapons were sold to Camacho, the man police stopped in Brownsville.

ATF agents said Chapa used straw purchasers for some of his gun buys. One woman bought 19 weapons from ZIA between Nov. 7 and Dec. 18.

She told investigators, according to a federal criminal complaint, that Chapa would give her large sums of cash, and when she went to ZIA she would either say she was there to “pick up a shipment” or she’d say “what’s up man.”

A ZIA employee would have the weapons ready even though she hadn’t ordered in advance, and she would drive the weapons to north Houston, dropping them off with a man in a dark Cadillac Escalade, she told investigators.

Investigators later used this information to charge Chapa with making a straw purchase.

Firearms traffickers frequently recruit straw purchasers — typically people who don’t have criminal records that would make it illegal for them to buy weapons — to make large buys. Smugglers give straw purchasers money to buy guns — and pay them $100 for each gun they obtain — and then sell them in Mexico for twice or three times what they originally paid.

A soldier stands guard outside the City Hall in Villa Union, Coahuila state, Mexico, on Dec. 2, 2019. Mexican security forces were searching for the gunmen involved in the armed attack on Villa Union on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1.

After the ATF learned of the local link to the Villa Union shootout, agents spent months building a case against people they say were involved in a gun-running ring that bought and transported hundreds of guns into Mexico. They used confidential informants to make purchases at the ZIA gun shop.

One of the informants was a convicted felon and thus prohibited from buying firearms. The other was not a felon and therefore could pass the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check.

On March 27 the two informants went to ZIA. The felon discussed purchases with Abdulaziz, according to a federal criminal complaint filed in the case. When Abdulaziz asked for a driver’s license in order to do a background check the informant said he had a criminal background. Abdulaziz suggested that the person with him could make the purchase; he put the sale through under the name of the second informant and then handed the weapons to the person he understood to be a felon, investigators said.

At a subsequent visit to the store in April, the felon informant made clear his intention to take the weapons to Mexico.

“If you come in here buying this gun and you already know you are going to go flip it, that’s illegal,” Abdulaziz said, according to the complaint. “It’s all about your intention. . . . If you are buying it because you want it, and then you decide you want to sell it later, well that’s up to you. You can sell anything you want. Just a head’s up.”

Before finalizing the sale he asked the straw buyer (the informant without a record) to affirm that it was not being bought for anyone else. “You are allowed to buy a thousand of them if you want. You just can’t buy for anyone else.”

Paper violations

Former federal law enforcement officials and other experts say lack of U.S. laws that explicitly target firearms trafficking or ban sales of assault weapons leave them outgunned, forced to cobble together cases with other charges.

And after investigations such as the ZIA case, agents often can only charge the lower rungs of the operations. And the charges available to them are for “paper violations” with weaker penalties, such as lying on paperwork connected to gun sales.

“Those technically are paper violations, but those are the violations that we have to charge because of the lack of a firearms trafficking statute,” Milanowski said.

Though weapons have been smuggled into Mexico for decades, the problem intensified after the U.S. assault weapons ban was lifted in 2004, said Eugenio Weigend, who studies gun violence and firearms trafficking at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.

In the years since, Mexican police armed themselves with increasingly powerful American guns. Federal agents say they’ve seen cartels respond in kind, obtaining weapons more commonly used by military forces, such as .50-caliber belt-fed rifles — which are powerful enough to down helicopters.

The NRA and other lobbying organizations have blocked efforts to strengthen restrictions on arms purchases or pass laws to crack down on trafficking.

“We have a major problem with gun violence,” said David Chipman, a retired ATF Special Agent who now works for Giffords, a nonprofit aimed at reducing gun violence. “Dealing guns should be a significant federal violation.”

Ken Magidson, the region’s U.S. Attorney until 2017, said federal agents and prosecutors use a variety of tools to combat cartel violence. That includes undercover infiltration of groups, filing organized crime or racketeering charges, or prosecuting drug cases or specific acts of violence — as well as filing similar charges to those brought in the ZIA case.

But prosecuting the violations is hard, former agents say, because the people traffickers recruit usually have no criminal record, meaning they are unlikely to receive any significant prison time if convicted and have little incentive to cooperate with investigators.

That makes the case less attractive for federal prosecutors to pursue, said Chipman.

“What they have to charge someone with is lying on a form, or dealing without a license,” he said. “It lacks jury appeal. It’s a more difficult case to make.”

Coahuila state Gov. Miguel Riquelme Solis looks at a police vehicle shot during a gunbattle between Mexican security forces and suspected cartel gunmen in Villa Union, Mexico, Saturday, Nov. 30, 2019. Four police officers and two civilians were killed after an armed group in a convoy of trucks stormed the town, prompting security forces to intervene.

Gun seller, gun buyers

Agents began to identify people who made straw purchases at ZIA, records show. They traced the pistol Brownsville police had found in Camacho’s car to one of the Houston straw puchasers. Documents filed in federal court show the operation bought more than 150 weapons suspected of being trafficked to Mexico.

In the end, grand jurors issued indictments for aiding and abetting a false statement on background check forms. Investigators brought cases against at least 15 people linked to the case.

Camacho, who was found with guns as well empty gun boxes linked to arms that ended up in Mexico, was charged with possessing a Barrett .50 caliber rifle without a legitimate serial number that had been transported in “interstate or foreign commerce” and with making false statements on ATF forms.

Abdulaziz faces 13 charges, including selling a firearm to a prohibited person and making false statements on ATF forms.

Abdulaziz and the other defendants’ cases have not yet been set for trial.

Christian Navarro, the attorney representing Chapa, said that his client has pleaded not guilty. “Mr. Chapa will continue to plea his innocence as we learn more about the government's charges against him. As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Chapa is innocent of the government's charges."

The gunshop owner’s attorney, Cordt Akers, said Abdulaziz is innocent and didn’t intentionally sell to traffickers.

“He found out about the shootings the same way we all did. He found out about it on CNN,” Akers said.

Akers acknowledged that many of the guns sold ended up in Mexico but said investigators’ criminal complaint shows Abdulaziz warned buyers if they were engaging in illegal activity he wouldn’t sell them weapons.

He said federal agents had no proof Abdulaziz committed crimes.“That proof doesn’t exist because that's not the truth,” he said.

Villa Union

That is little comfort to Arizpe, the Villa Union mayor.

Eight months after the attack, the memories are no less vivid.

She had a stroke afterward, and spent five days in the hospital. She refused to resign and has since recovered. She felt responsible for the town and her friends, she said.

The state’s governor ordered bodyguards to accompany her everywhere after the attack; she couldn’t see her family — she was worried they might be killed in retaliation. She found herself looking over her shoulder every time she left her house.

“It seems very unjust a little boy could get a gun and kill someone,” she said. “They brought fear and killed innocents.”

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