Fact Sheet: Department of Justice Efforts to Combat Mexican Drug Cartels

WASHINGTON – The increased efforts and reallocation of personnel recently announced by the Department of Justice builds on the foundation of expertise and experience gained from ongoing efforts to combat Mexican drug cartels in the United States and to help Mexican law enforcement battle cartels in its own country. BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, FIREARMS AND EXPLOSIVES (ATF) ATF is on the frontline in the fight against violent crime, particularly firearms trafficking and gun-related violence associated with organized gangs and drug trafficking organizations. Working in conjunction with domestic and international law enforcement partners, ATF’s efforts deny the “tools of the trade” to the firearms trafficking infrastructure of criminal organizations operating in Mexico and along the border. ATF is relocating 100 personnel to the Houston Field Division to support the new ATF intelligence-driven effort, known as Gunrunner Impact Teams (GRITs). The teams will focus ATF’s violent crime-fighting and firearms trafficking expertise, along with its regulatory authority and strategic partnerships, to combat violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Project Gunrunner: Cooperation among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and the government of Mexico is the foundation of Project Gunrunner, ATF’s national initiative to stem firearms trafficking to Mexico by organized criminal groups. Project Gunrunner has resulted in approximately 650 cases by ATF, in which more than 1,400 defendants were referred for prosecution in federal and state courts and more than 12,000 firearms were involved. As part of the Recovery Act funding, ATF received $10 million for Project Gunrunner efforts, aimed at disrupting firearms trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico, to include hiring 25 new special agents, six industry operations investigators (IOIs), three intelligence research specialists and three investigative analysts. The funding will establish three permanent field offices, dedicated to firearms trafficking investigations, in McAllen, Texas; El Centro, Calif.; and Las Cruces, N.M (including a satellite office in Roswell, N.M.). Previously, approximately 148 special agents were dedicated to investigating firearms trafficking on a full-time basis and 59 IOIs were responsible for conducting regulatory inspections of federally licensed gun dealers, known as federal firearms licensees (FFLs) along the Southwest border. As the sole federal agency that regulates FFLs, ATF’s cadre of IOIs work to identify and prioritize for inspection those FFLs with a history of noncompliance that represent a risk to public safety; who sell the weapons most commonly used by drug trafficking organizations in the region; and have numerous unsuccessful traces and a large volume of firearms recoveries in high-crime areas. Along the Southwest border, ATF inspected approximately 1,700 FFLs in FY 2007 and 1,900 in FY 2008. eTrace: The cornerstone of ATF’s Project Gunrunner is eTrace, which allows law enforcement agencies to identify trends of drug trafficking organizations. In 2008, ATF deployed eTrace technology to the nine U.S. consulates in Mexico to facilitate the paperless exchange of gun crime data in a secure Web-based environment. eTrace allows law enforcement representatives to electronically submit firearms trace requests, to monitor the progress of traces, to retrieve completed trace results and to query firearm trace related data in a real-time environment. In FY 2008, Mexico submitted more than 7,500 recovered guns for tracing, most of which were traced to sources in Texas, California and Arizona. ATF has analyzed firearms recovered in Mexico from 2005-2008 and has identified the following weapons most commonly used by drug trafficking organizations: 9mm pistols; .38-caliber revolvers; 5.7mm pistols; .223-caliber rifles; 7.62mm rifles; and .50 caliber rifles. ATF is developing a Spanish-language eTrace to make firearms tracing easier and more accessible to law enf