Two Americans were convicted of manufacturing and shipping automatic weapons, type AR-15, to drug cartels in Mexico, The Department of Justice reported this Thursday in a statement.
Jaime Jesús Esquivel, 37, a resident of Laredo, Texas, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to having manufactured and shipped the homemade weapons, which are called ‘ghost’ because they are difficult to trace because they lack a number. serial.
The federal investigation determined that Esquivel manufactured the weapons using parts from combat weapons, including parts from Colt M4 rifles and machine gun conversion devices.
The second defendant, José Abraham Nicanor, 34, of Houston, was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal purchase and trafficking of firearms.
Nicanor sent nearly 100 weapons to Mexico, which were found by Mexican authorities in the possession of drug trafficking organizations.
In an undercover operation, federal authorities made four purchases of AR-15-type automatic rifles. All the weapons were ‘ghost’, that is, homemade.
US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland highlighted in the statement that the Department of Justice “will do everything in its power to find and hold accountable the traffickers who are arming the cartels.”
For his part, Steven Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), warned that his agency will not “stand by” while ‘ghost’ weapons flow to Mexican cartels.
Anti-arms trafficking bill
Last Tuesday a group of Democratic congressmen presented an bill that seeks to control the trafficking of firearms and ammunition across the United States border with Mexico.
The initiative, titled ‘Disarm the Cartels’ instructs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “identify and dismantle transnational criminal organizations responsible for the export of weapons and ammunition from the US to Mexico.”
The project includes an expansion in the collection and analysis of information about firearms recovered at crime sites in Mexico to identify smugglers operating within the US.
“For years, American weapons have promoted violence, instability and forced migration throughout the Western Hemisphere,” said Congressman Joaquín Castro, one of the promoters.
“The United States can, and must, do more to prevent the weapons we make from falling into the hands of criminal organizations that smuggle fentanyl and other lethal drugs into the United States,” Castro added.
For his part, Congressman Dan Goldman said that “Democrats and Republicans alike recognize the threat posed by the fentanyl trade and human smuggling and trafficking.”
However, he criticized that the Republicans “ignore that the source of the cartels’ power is in the hundreds of thousands of weapons manufactured in the United States that leave the country and go into the hands of the cartels.”
More than a year after Mexico’s demand
In October 2022, Mexico filed a lawsuit in the state of Arizona against five US companies for arms trafficking, the second is filed due to the use of weapons devices from said companies in crimes in Mexico.
The then Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard argued that “Mexico presented today in Arizona a lawsuit that would be the second regarding weapons, especially against five companies that are located in that state that in recent years have been responsible for the sale of weapons that “They appear in very serious crimes.”
In August 2021, the Mexican government sued 11 gun manufacturers in a court in Boston, Massachusetts, for negligence and promoting illicit trafficking, but the lawsuit was dismissed by a judge.
*With information from EFE.
Keep reading:
– The US imposed sanctions on 13 members of the Sinaloa Cartel for fentanyl trafficking.
– The United States announces sanctions against “Chiquito Malo”, leader of the Gulf Clan.