EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The governments of Mexico and the United States have agreed to step up efforts to stop guns and ammunition from flowing across the border.
The binational initiative known as Mission Firewall expands the use of eTrace – a U.S. secure internet program where local law enforcement can analyze data from specific guns – to all 32 states in Mexico.
It includes Mexico’s commitment to participate in more cross-border investigations and prosecutions of violent criminals. The U.S., in turn, pledges it will increase southbound inspections at the border to keep weapons purchased in American cities from falling in the hands of drug cartels in Mexico.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson called the agreement reached Friday in McAllen, Texas, a “before and after” when it comes to disarming transnational criminal organizations in North America.
“For the first time, the United States and Mexico are implementing joint inspections, real-time information sharing, and expanded investigations to stop the weapons that fuel the cartels,” Johnson said on social media. “(This is) historic cooperation to protect both nations.”
The trafficking of guns from the United States has been one of Mexico’s main peeves when it comes to the binational relationship.
Mexico severely restricts gun ownership, and the entire country has a single firearms factory. Yet, transnational criminal organizations operating south of the border have all sorts of firepower including specialized weapons that have brought down Mexican military helicopters.
The guns and ammunition often are bought by “straw buyers,” or U.S. residents paid by criminals to individually purchase them for them in gun stores, gun shows, or from firearms owners. They are smuggled through ports of entry into Mexico in passenger vehicles and even in the luggage compartment of buses.
Mexico reported between 29,000 and 36,000 murders a year between 2017 and 2023, most of them committed with the use of a firearm not produced or sold in Mexico.
U.S. federal authorities in 2023 seized more than 1,100 pistols and rifles being smuggled to Mexico through southbound land U.S. ports of entry. This year, that number is less than 600, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition also have been seized at the border in the past few years.
The State Department said the U.S. firearms information would be shared with Mexico through a “first-of-its-kind secure platform” with data on suspicious air shipments and packages that might not only include firearms but also illicit drugs, chemical precursors, and illicitly sold fuel.
“Both nations will expand security cooperation to build capacity to target and destroy cartels and to significantly improve security benchmarks,” the State Department said on a statement on Saturday.
On Saturday in Mazatlan, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the agreement would benefit her country.
“They always say the main issue is what comes into the United States from Mexico. Now, for the first time, the foremost issue on the table is the weapons that come from the United States into Mexico,” she said during a rally in the Mexican Pacific Coast resort.
She said the agreement came out of the first meeting of a binational public safety working group established during U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit in early September.
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