Watch the CBS Reports documentary “Arming Cartels: Inside the Mexican-American Gunrunning Networks” in the video player above.
Mexican drug cartels have been smuggling a vast arsenal of even military-grade weapons out of the U.S. with the help of American citizens, a CBS Reports investigation has found. Exclusively-obtained U.S. intelligence documents and interviews with half a dozen current and former officials reveal that the American government has known this for years but, sources said, it’s done little to stop these weapons trafficking networks inside the United States, which move up to a million firearms across the border annually, including belt-fed miniguns and grenade launchers.
Dozens of cartel gunrunning networks, operating like terrorist cells, pay Americans to buy weapons from gun stores and online dealers all across the country, as far north as Wisconsin and even Alaska, according to U.S. intelligence sources. The firearms are then shipped across the southwest border through a chain of brokers and couriers.
This infographic was created by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division as a visual representation of intelligence findings, to depict how an American supply chain provides firearms and ammunition to Mexican cartels.
When CBS News pressed the Justice Department about its findings, a senior official confirmed that “We absolutely recognize the problem here that … the lion’s share of firearms trafficked to Mexican cartels are coming from the United States.”
For over 50 years, the U.S. government has waged an unsuccessful war on drug traffickers, who are now fueling a deadly fentanyl epidemic. The free flow of American guns across the southern border empowers the cartels to protect their drug operations and outgun Mexican authorities, U.S. officials said. “We have allowed the cartels to amass an army,” said Chris Demlein, a former senior special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
Guns and ammunition seized by U.S. law enforcement at the border. U.S. government photo
Demlein led a successful interagency intelligence project called Project Thor, aimed at identifying and dismantling the cartels’ international weapons supply chains across the U.S. Project Thor connected various law enforcement cases, uncovering vast networks that give these criminal groups easy access to American guns. Demlein and his team briefed hundreds of government officials on their discoveries, including the National Security Council and senior Justice Department leadership.
This illustration, based on an intelligence map generated by DEA Special Operations Division Project Thor, depicts the smuggling paths of a “supernetwork” of interconnected gun supply chains that were illegally funneling military-grade firearms at the direction of the Jalisco New Generation cartel in Mexico.
Project Thor estimated that cartels were trafficking between 250,000 and 1 million weapons annually, with a retail value of up to $500 million. Up to 85% of firearms found in crime scenes in Mexico were traced back to the U.S. Without Project Thor, U.S. law enforcement agencies were more focused on protecting their own interests rather than prosecuting criminal organizations, according to Edwin Starr, a retired senior special agent from the ATF.
Despite its success, Project Thor was denied funding for fiscal year 2022, effectively shutting it down. The Biden administration has expressed a commitment to tackling the issue, pointing to Operation Southbound, an ATF initiative to disrupt firearm trafficking from the U.S. to Mexico, among other efforts. However, some officials doubt the effectiveness of these approaches and criticize the lack of meaningful progress.
Senior officials defended their approach to countering weapons smuggling. ATF Director Steven Dettelbach stated that the agency is committed to stopping illegal trafficking into Mexico. They cited the prosecution of 100 people in the past year and the investigation of entire trafficking networks. However, there is no evidence to demonstrate a significant reduction in the flow of American firearms to Mexico.
U.S. law enforcement seized 1,720 firearms in the first six months of fiscal year 2022, which accounts for less than 1% of all firearms being smuggled across the border. The issue of cartel gunrunning networks remains a major challenge for the U.S. government and a bipartisan failure that needs to be addressed.
Senior officials from the Justice Department and ATF, as well as other law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic officials, expressed doubts about the effectiveness of current approaches in dismantling cartel gunrunning networks. The ongoing strategies have been deemed ineffective and a failure of the U.S. government.
-Adam Yamaguchi and Sarah Metz contributed reporting.
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