Border bullets

[Lodge2004]

More laying of the foundation in preparation for future legislation. I'd love to see how all of this is coordinated.

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Frontera staging point for smuggling ammunition
By TODD BENSMAN
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Published: Sunday, December 21, 2008 1:10 AM CST

McALLEN - So popular is the 7.62-caliber ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles that one store in this border city stacks shoebox-sized cases several feet high down half a row in the hunting section.

Employees like Francisco Rodriguez, who works in the guns and ammo section of Academy Sports and Outdoors, tell stories about men piling shopping carts high with the $74 cases of 7.62-caliber rounds, as well as clearing shelves of 9 mm rounds and other ammunition for assault-style rifles.

Several employees at other South Texas stores said customers routinely pay thousands in cash and wheel the stuff out, no questions asked.

"I had a guy come in the other day and clear me out of .223s," Rodriguez said of ammunition that fits assault-type rifles as well as classic hunting rifles.

"He paid $5,000 cash, and then he went to one of our other stores and cleaned that out, too.

I didn't ask what he was going to do with it. It isn't my business to ask.

They're probably taking it over to Mexico."

There is nothing illegal about buying or selling large amounts of civilian-use ammunition to just about any adult U.S. citizen.

Bullets are almost as unregulated as milk or bread, with no recordkeeping requirement, no limit on the amount of ammunition a person can buy, or disqualifying criminal history for buyers, unlike some rules governing the sale of guns.

Also unlike guns, bullets don't have serial numbers that can be traced to a store or person.

This is a big problem, according to Mexican officials.

Mountains of illegal ammunition keep turning up across the Rio Grande in drug cartel depots, much of it smuggled from the U.S.

The sale of American ammunition is so loosely regulated that Mexican smugglers are dropping over on three-day shopping visas to cruise a bounty of stores within the restricted 25-mile-deep visa zone in the U.S.

Judging by court cases and seizures, the day-trippers are doing their part to bring home huge quantities of bullets.

The one law that applies to ammunition purchases doesn't help law enforcement much.

It requires that buyers be U.S. citizens. But retailers aren't required to check.


A hotbed of gunrunning


Texas is a hotbed of gunrunning that has armed drug cartels with thousands of weapons, most bought through straw purchasers in the United States.

Hundreds of weapons recovered at the scenes of gun battles in Mexico, where drug traffickers have killed more than 5,000 Mexican citizens, are traced back to Texas.

American law enforcement authorities, under pressure from Mexico, have been clamping down on gunrunning, and now they're going after the ammunition.

"The main thing is for us to stop the illegal flow of guns going to Mexico, but if they don't have bullets, they can't use them," said J. Dewey Webb, the Houston-based head of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"It's just as important and it's just as illegal. If we could reduce the traffickers to throwing rocks at each other, I think we've achieved our goal."

Authorities believe one of the nation's busiest ammunition smuggling corridors runs through South Texas because of a proliferation of stores close to border crossings.

That pipeline, they say, runs along Texas 77 and 281 south through McAllen, Harlingen and Brownsville.

The connecting Mexican state of Tamaulipas is among the top five Mexican states for ammunition seizures, according to Mexico's Office of Attorney General.

Last month, what has been dubbed Mexico's largest ever cartel weapons stash was discovered in Reynosa. It held 500,000 bullets and 540 firearms.

Mexico's attorney general's office says 3 million rounds have been seized nationally in the last 24 months.


Don't ask, don't tell


Kirkpatrick Guns and Ammo resides in a shopping district on the north side of Laredo.

On Nov. 1, 2006, two Mexican men in town on shopping visas were sitting on the store floor sorting their purchase of 12,570 rounds of assorted ammunition when their luck ran out.

In through the door walked off-duty ATF Special Agent Frank Arrendondo to do some personal shopping.

Arredondo arrested the men, Carlos Alberto Osorio Castrejon and Ramon Uresti Careaga, who later confessed they'd made other day trips for American ammunition to take with them back to Mexico, including two purchases the previous month at another store, where they paid $6,193 in cash.

They said the ammo was smuggled across the international bridge hidden on a tractor-trailer rig.

At the time, Nuevo Laredo gun battles between rival drug cartels were leaving bodies strewn through the streets.

Last year, both Mexicans pleaded guilty and got 15 months in prison. Kirkpatrick Guns was never on the hook.

The bust illustrates how easily ammunition trafficking is accomplished.

Longtime Kirkpatrick Guns manager Maria Elena Gonzalez, when asked about bullet buyers who pay cash, said she almost always makes sure her Spanish-speaking customers present some proof of citizenship to steer clear of any possible trouble with the one law.

"I always ask, 'Are you from here?' " she said. "If they say, 'Mexico,' it's 'Oh, I'm sorry.' "

But when reminded of the Osorio and Uresti smuggling case in her store, Gonzalez said she wasn't there that day.

Storeowner Bill Kirkpatrick, who Gonzalez said was there that day, said he doesn't like asking and isn't legally required to.

"On ammo, we don't ask, because a lot of people can get offended," Kirkpatrick said.

"It's politically incorrect, like you're calling them a (racial expletive)."

With thousands of dollars in cash on the counter, it's easy to see why retailers might not feel curious about citizenship.

But federal prosecutors warn that "prudent" ammunition sellers would be wise to get curious.


A most elusive contraband


On the Laredo side of the international bridge one day recently, a special mobile team of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents had set up shop.

American Customs officers work mostly the northbound traffic from Mexico.

But three CBP teams in the Laredo area do the opposite and were randomly pulling over a small percentage of cars, trucks and buses headed south into Mexico.

They are one of the few reliable weapons the U.S. has against ammunition smugglers.

On Dec. 11, officers found some 300 rounds, plus pistol and assault rifle magazines, hidden in the compartment of a 2000 Ford Expedition driven by Raul Alvarez Jr., the manager of a bordello in Nuevo Laredo.

Team members on any given day show up at one of six different Laredo border crossings to keep the drug cartel spotters off guard.

They use hand-held X-ray gear that can see through car panels and fiber optic scopes that can look down gas tanks.

Recently, a new tool was added: a dog named Lucy trained to sniff out ammunition.

But with only three teams to patrol six Laredo bridges, they can only do so much.

One recent day, neither Lucy nor her CBP partners found any southbound ammunition at the main Laredo passenger bridge to Nuevo Laredo.

But on the other side of the same crossing, a grim-faced Mexican Army officer, who wouldn't be identified, said his machine-gun toting squad found a massive stash of guns and ammunition in a pickup that had gotten through the Americans.

The lucky discovery exemplified the hit-or-miss nature of new efforts on both sides to troll for ammunition.

The CBP team strongly suspects the 155 ammunition seizures made in 2008 in the busy Brownsville-to-Del Rio sector made hardly a dent.

"The reality is that the smuggler has the advantage over us," conceded CBP Assistant Port Director Jose R. Uribe.

"It's just the nature of the border."


Dumb luck


Dumb luck is the regular, if unreliable, partner in these efforts. A U.S. agent has to somehow catch physical sight of a smuggler or catch them in the act, like at Kirkpatrick's.

For example, in November 2006, El Paso police officers just happened to spot two Mexican men driving into an alley behind Alamo Shooters Supply.

They followed and watched the men cart out dollies laden with tens of thousands of rounds.

Javier Paredes Vega and his brother, Jorge Paredes Vega, admitted they were regular ammo smugglers who made profitable use of their day-visa privileges.

Last year, both pleaded guilty to weapons violations.

In a different El Paso case this year, a lucky tip from a sympathetic gun store owner led agents to close down a well-oiled ring of bullet smugglers who'd been responsible for sending as many as 80,000 rounds to Mexico.

The deployment of Mexican army units at major border crossings is new.

Their role is singular: to increase the odds of finding incoming vehicles carrying American guns, ammunition and explosives.


Cursory checks


But observation of several of those military units showed their checks usually amount to hand knocking along the sides of vehicles to check for the sound of hidden compartments.

They have none of the equipment their CPB counterparts use, let alone ammo-sniffing canines.

Both sides, though, have no choice but to let some less-trammeled crossings go untended.

The Los Ebanos International Ferry, about 30 miles west of McAllen, is one of the last hand-pulled boats that traverse the 75 yards across the muddy Rio Grande.

Old-style, Mexican deckhands strain on pulley ropes to slowly move three or four vehicles at a time over the river.

On a recent business day at the ferry crossing, only a couple of civilian customs officials were stationed on the Mexican side.

Sometimes they glanced into back seats or opened a trunk for a hands-off glance inside.

On the American side, no one was checking southbound vehicles that day.

But smugglers of all kinds know this place well.

One of the rope pullers, Alejos Flores, 66, said the narcos offer him big money to rent his small blue rowboat on a riverbank.

"They're not crossing watermelons," Flores said, explaining why he'll keep rope pulling for a living.

"I learned a long time ago that if I don't put my hand in the fire, I won't get burned."

[sbb]

Sounds like the Mexican government needs to build a fence along the border to keep out the smugglers.

[boomerang]

Sounds like the Mexican government needs to build a fence along the border to keep out the smugglers.

I think Texas should offer to trade with Mexico. They can send us illegal guns and ammo from north of the border and we'll send them illegal aliens from south of the border. It's NAFTArific.

[bridge]

"I assure you Senior Ambassador, we'll put in as much effort at stopping guns going south of our border as you have at stopping illegal immigration and narcotics going north of your border. Seriously."

I don't mean to sound trite but, COME ON! This stuff is absolutely ridiculous.

[DoubleJ]

Sounds like the Mexican government needs to build a fence along the border to keep out the smugglers.

I think Texas should offer to trade with Mexico. They can send us illegal guns and ammo from north of the border and we'll send them illegal aliens from south of the border. It's NAFTArific.

That idea is NAFTAstic!