Mexico demands to know why drug cartels use US military weapons

Mexico asked the United States to investigate urgently entry into the Mexican territory of weapons “for the exclusive use of the US military” and that they are falling into the hands of the cartels, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said on Monday.

“There is one very important thing and that is that the Secretary of Defense has alerted the United States about the entry into Mexico of weapons for the exclusive use of the US military,” he said during the morning presidential briefing. it is very urgent to do some research on this.

According to Bárcena, the request was made last Friday, during the meeting held in Washington between senior officials of the two governments.

What weapons do drug traffickers have at their disposal?

In June, the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) said it had seized 221 machine guns fully automatic, 56 grenade thrower and a dozen rocket launcher to drug cartels since late 2018.

The sale in gun shops and possession of these types of weapons for civilian use is prohibited by law in the United States, which indicates that they were acquired and transferred to Mexico. in another way.

The American military-grade weapons, which the cartel members were openly displayed in social media postsrepresents a further challenge for Mexican security forces who have long seen how these groups work use armored vehicles and homemade drones who throw bombs.

As Secretary of Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval explained in June, five rocket launchers had been seized from the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, four from the Sinaloa cartel and three more from other criminal groups. At the time, General Sandoval did not specify whether the weapons came from US military arsenals.

“We are committed to working with Sedena to see what is there,” the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, said at a news conference Monday.

“I don’t know what happened in this case,” he added, but insisted that the United States is among its priorities stop the illegal flow of all types of weapons towards Mexico.

How do weapons get to Mexico?

The Mexican government estimates this 70% of illegal weapons Those arriving in Mexico are from the United States, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

There are several possible routes through which it could have reached Mexican territory. On one sideCentral America was awash in such weapons during the conflicts of the 1980s. and, furthermore, journalistic investigations denounced the United States he hid the loss of the weapons for years of their arsenals.

Mexican security analyst David Saucedo talks about another way. What seems most feasible is that these weapons they were obtained on the black market from the traffickers who purchased them from the intermediaries of those who produce them.

Additionally, Mexico has long had a problem with semi-automatic rifles for civilian use permitted in the United States and smuggled into Mexico, where only low-caliber firearms are permitted and strictly regulated.

For this reason the Mexican government is committed lawsuits against American gun manufacturers and gun shopsclaiming they contribute to violence.

On Monday, in fact, a Boston appeals court gave Mexico a victory in one of those actions, when it reactivates a $10 billion lawsuit against seven manufacturers and a US arms dealer. Mexico argued that the companies knew the weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico and decided to take advantage of that market.

In 2022, a US federal judge dismissed the Mexican lawsuits based on a 2005 US law that protects gun manufacturers from harm “resulting from the improper, criminal, or illegal use” of a firearm.

Mexico appealed the ruling and on Monday the appeals court agreed, revived the case arguing that the aforementioned law is not applicable in cases of weapons that caused death, damage and injury in Mexico and sent the case back to court of first instance to review the sentence. -examine the case thoroughly.

Immigration, the other problem

The issue of US military weapons was just one of the points of last Friday’s high-level meeting, which focused more on migration and is a continuation of the meeting held in December in Mexico City, before the increase in irregular crossings on the border between the two countries.

According to Bárcena, the United States has informed Mexico of its intention to sanction South American, Central American and possibly Mexican companies that transport migrants in an irregular situation, although in the case of Mexican companies the chancellor has asked that this not be done unilaterally by Washington. … and assured that the Mexican government is already analyzing the issue.

When asked about this, Ambassador Salazar simply cited as an example the actions against airlines transporting migrants through Nicaragua.

Another Mexican request was that the CBOne app, which allows many migrants to request an appointment with US authorities to immigrate legally from the south of the country and not just from the capital or the northern half of Mexico.