World
Mexico demands answers amid flood of US military-grade weapons to drug cartels
The Mexican government has demanded an “urgent” investigation into how U.S.-grade weapons have ended up in the hands of drug cartels.
“Weapons like this present an extreme danger when they land in the hands of criminals,” Kristina Mastropasqua, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), told Fox News Digital. “A danger not only to the public, but to the law enforcement agents on both sides of the border as well.”
“Operation Southbound is ATF’s primary operational initiative to disrupt the trafficking of firearms from the United States to Mexico,” Mastropasqua explained. “Operation Southbound is focused on the four southwest border states, as the majority of the firearms being trafficked to Mexico originate from there, but it is not exclusive to just those states.”
“Cross-border firearms trafficking is diffuse, does not only occur on the border, and does not always include dozens of firearms being illegally transported at once; often only a few are trafficked, and they originate in states far from the southwest border,” she added.
CARTEL HUMAN SMUGGLING BUSINESS IS TURNING ENTIRE BORDER TOWNS INTO WAR ZONES
Voice of America reported in June that the number of weapons smuggled into Mexico could top half a million a year, but the total remains uncertain.
The issue has plagued the U.S. for years. President Obama in 2012 formalized the Border Enforcement Security Task Forces, which focused on tackling cartel activities, including and primarily focusing on arms smuggling, but the issue has not significantly abated, Mexican officials claim.
Mexican marines escort five alleged drug traffickers of the Zeta drug cartel in front of an RPG-7 rocket launcher, hand grenades, firearms, cocaine and military uniforms seized from alleged members of the Zetas drug traffickers cartel and presented to the press on June 9, 2011 at the Navy Secretaryship in Mexico City. (Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)
“The (Mexican) Defense Department has warned the United States about weapons entering Mexico that are for the exclusive use of the U.S. Army,” Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said.
The Mexican army said it has seized 221 fully automatic machine guns, 56 grenade launchers and a dozen rocket launchers from cartels since late 2018.
MEXICAN SOLDIERS FIND FACTORY PRODUCING DRONE BOMBS, GRENADE LAUNCHERS, FAKE MILITARY UNIFORMS
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar on Monday told reporters that “70% of the weapons that cause violence here in Mexico come from the United States.” He stressed that reducing the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico remained a top priority for President Biden, the AFP reported.
“We are going to look into it, we are committed to working with Sedena (Mexico’s Defense Department) to see what’s going on,” Salazar said.
Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena, center, speaks during a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss U.S.-Mexican migration, in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department in Washington, Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
A Reuters report from Dec. 2023 delved into one example of a U.S. weapons factory in Wisconsin that in 2018 allegedly started supplying high-caliber weapons, including sniper rifles, to the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion.
The report claimed that the cartel exploited “permissive federal and state-level gun control rules to buy some of the most powerful weapons available to American civilians,” citing former U.S. ATF agents.
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Members of a local family in Racine, Wisconsin, with connections to a cousin in Mexico, would buy the guns and ship them to California, where they could then ship the weapons across the border, according to an indictment from Wisconsin’s Eastern District Court.
Mexican authorities found that same cartel in possession of five rocket launchers during the summer of 2023, with four more launchers confiscated from the rival Sinaloa cartel and three more seized from other cartels.
The initials of the drug cartel “Jalisco Nueva Generacion” (CJNG) are seen in graffiti on a wall in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco State, Mexico, on Aug. 29, 2023. (Ulises Ruiz/AFP via Getty Images)
“In Mexico, too often, when firearms are diverted to unlawful markets, they are going to arm dangerous drug cartels,” Mastropasqua said. “They are getting into the hands of extremely violent organizations that seek to use firearms to further other criminal and illicit activities.”
“Many times these cartels are not looking for just any firearm to fuel their criminal enterprises,” she continued. “They are seeking a level of weaponry that outguns Mexican law enforcement authorities, including weapons that are used by the American military.”
32 MIGRANTS KIDNAPPED NEAR US-MEXICO BORDER WERE FREED, NOT RESCUED, AMLO CLARIFIES
“ATF’s Mexico Country Office works closely with Mexican authorities to increase the volume and timeliness of firearms tracing through ATF’s eTrace system: That is, tracing a crime gun back to its first known retail purchase,” Mastropasqua added. “This capability is incredibly important because so many of the firearms recovered from crimes in Mexico originate in the United States. Between 2017 and 2022, trace submissions from Mexico nearly doubled.”
A U.S. federal judge in 2022 dismissed Mexico’s $10 billion lawsuit against seven American gun manufacturers and one distributor, in which officials argued the companies knew the weapons they made would end up sold to traffickers and decided to profit.
However, on Monday, an appeals court in Boston revived the lawsuit, saying the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields gun manufacturers from damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm, did not apply to such cases that occurred in Mexico.
The Pentagon referred Fox News Digital to the Mexican government or the U.S. State Department when asked for comment. The State Department did not respond by time of publication.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
U.S. installations damaged in strikes
Iran has responded to the U.S.-Israeli assault on the country by launching drones and missiles at American targets across the Middle East, hitting embassies, killing U.S. soldiers, and damaging military bases and air defense infrastructure.
The New York Times has identified at least 17 damaged U.S. sites and other installations, several of which have been struck more than once since the war began. Our analysis is based on high-resolution, commercial satellite imagery, verified social media videos and statements by U.S. officials and Iranian state media.
The intensity of the retaliatory strikes has signaled that Iran was more prepared for the war than many in the Trump administration had anticipated, U.S. military officials say.
For this article, we are presenting satellite images to show the scale of the damage from Iran’s attacks on U.S. sites and installations. Many of these images have been circulating publicly on news sites and social media. But in cases where they have not been, we present the imagery we obtained from satellite image companies and show only a zoomed-out view of each location to limit the amount of detail viewable in those images.
Military sites
Iran has fired thousands of missiles and drones at both U.S. and allied country military sites across the region. The United States and its allies have intercepted most of them, U.S. officials say, but at least 11 American military bases or installations have been damaged — nearly half of all such sites in the region.
On Feb. 28, the first day of conflict, Iran targeted several U.S. military facilities, including Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; Ali Al Salem Air Base and Camp Buehring Base in Kuwait; and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East.
Satellite images show extensive damage to buildings and communication infrastructure at several locations.
A video taken on March 1 shows an Iranian drone exploding near sports facilities at Camp Buehring in Kuwait. No casualties were reported.
It is difficult to estimate the full cost of damage inflicted by Iran’s retaliatory strikes. A Pentagon assessment provided to Congress last week put the cost of the single strike on the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain on Feb. 28 at about $200 million, according to a congressional official.
On March 1, an Iranian drone struck a structure housing military personnel at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait, killing six American service members.
Satellite imagery shows the roof of that building partially collapsed.
An additional U.S. service member was killed in a separate Iranian strike on March 1 at a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, bringing the toll to seven, the Pentagon said on Sunday.
The pace of Iranian attacks has slowed since the war’s opening days, but the strikes have continued. Al Udeid Air Base, Ali Al Salem Air Base, Al Dhafra Air Base, Camp Buehring and the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters have all been struck more than once.
Missiles launched from Iran have flown as far away as Turkey. On March 4, NATO intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile headed toward Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, according to a senior U.S. military official. The base hosts a large U.S. Air Force contingent. Iran’s military denied firing the missile.
A second Iranian missile entered Turkish airspace and was shot down by NATO, according to a Turkish defense ministry statement on Monday.
Air defense and communication infrastructure
Among the costliest American losses to infrastructure have been to the air defense systems that protect U.S. and allied interests across the Middle East.
Iran has systematically targeted radar and communications systems, including components of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, which uses a radar to track and intercept incoming aerial threats throughout the region.
At Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, an important hub for the U.S. Air Force in Jordan, satellite imagery from February shows radar equipment at the base’s southern edge. An image taken two days after the war began shows severe damage to what appears to be an air defense sensor.
Military budget and contract documents indicate a single radar unit of this type can cost up to half a billion dollars.
A video from Feb. 28 shows an Iranian drone striking the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, damaging what appears to be a communications radome, a weatherproof cover that protects radar and communication equipment.
Gulf nations have also bought air defense equipment from American companies and deployed them near critical infrastructure, including oil refineries. Those foreign radar systems share information with the U.S. military, forming what defense analysts describe as a de facto, expanded U.S. military sensor network.
Iran has targeted such sites where air defense equipment was recently observed, like the Al Ruwais facility in the United Arab Emirates. Satellite imagery of the site from last year shows a THAAD unit near storage structures.
A satellite image taken after Iranian attacks shows significant damage to the storage structures. The Times was unable to verify whether the mobile THAAD unit was inside the storage structures at the time of the strikes.
Near Umm Dahal in Qatar, a long range AN/FPS-132 radar — built at a cost of $1.1 billion to provide early warning coverage across a 3,000 mile radius — apparently sustained damage to its main radar structure, as seen in satellite imagery.
The full extent of damage to U.S. air defense and communication infrastructure remains unclear. Michael Eisenstadt, a director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the affected radars would be difficult to repair or replace.
But Seth G. Jones, a president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the damage would most likely not significantly degrade U.S. military capabilities in this war. “The U.S. has such redundancy in collecting intelligence and other information from sensor networks, whether it’s land-based radars, aircrafts or space-based systems,” he said.
Diplomatic sites
Iran has also struck nonmilitary U.S. targets such as the consulate in Dubai, and embassies in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, forcing temporary closures. There have been no reported injuries in any of these attacks.
On Saturday night, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was targeted in a rocket attack. No casualties were reported. It was not immediately clear who was behind it and how much damage was caused. It is not included in The Times’s tally of damaged sites.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, said on March 7 that Iranian ballistic missile attacks had dropped 90 percent since the first day of the conflict and drone attacks by 83 percent. Despite the declining pace, Iran has continued to strike American targets across the region.
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Afghanistan as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention,” accusing the Taliban of “unjustly” detaining Americans and other foreign nationals.
In his announcement on Monday, Rubio said the Taliban continues to use “terrorist tactics” that he insisted “need to end.”
“I am designating Afghanistan as a State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention,” Rubio said in a statement. “The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions. These despicable tactics need to end.”
The secretary also called on the terror group to free a pair of Americans who are “unjustly detained” in Afghanistan.
IRAN REGIME CITED AS TRUMP ADMIN SET TO DESIGNATE SUDAN’S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERROR GROUP
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Afghanistan as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention.” (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“It is not safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continues to unjustly detain our fellow Americans and other foreign nationals,” he said. “The Taliban needs to release Dennis Coyle, Mahmoud Habibi, and all Americans unjustly detained in Afghanistan now and commit to cease the practice of hostage diplomacy forever.”
Coyle, 64, was detained more than a year ago without charges by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to his family, noting that he still has not been charged. His family said he was legally working to support Afghan language communities as an academic researcher.
Habibi, a 38-year-old American citizen who was born in Afghanistan, was taken along with his driver from their vehicle in the capital of Kabul in August 2022 by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to the State Department.
The FBI said Habibi was previously Afghanistan’s director of civil aviation and worked for the Kabul-based telecommunications company Asia Consultancy Group. The FBI said the Taliban detained 29 other employees of the company but has released most of them.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Taliban continues to use “terrorist tactics” that he insisted “need to end.” (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
Habibi has not been heard from since his arrest, and the Taliban has not disclosed his whereabouts or condition, according to the State Department and FBI. The Taliban has previously denied it detained Habibi.
The U.S. is also calling for the return of the remains of Paul Overby, an author who was last seen close to Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan in 2014, according to Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the situation.
The State Department could restrict the use of U.S. passports for travel to Afghanistan if the Taliban does not meet the U.S. government’s demands, the sources told the outlet.
A passport restriction of this kind is currently only in place for North Korea.
The Taliban called the decision by Rubio to designate Afghanistan a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” regrettable, adding that it wanted to resolve the matter through dialogue.
STATE DEPARTMENT DEFENDS ‘PROACTIVE’ EVACUATION EFFORTS AGAINST DEMS’ CLAIMS OF DIPLOMATIC CHAOS
The Taliban called the decision to designate Afghanistan a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” regrettable. (Reuters/Ali Khara)
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The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021 during the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country that ended the 20-year war in the region.
Rubio gave the “state sponsor of wrongful detention” designation to Iran late last month, just one day before the U.S.-Israeli strikes on the country. He warned that the U.S. could restrict travel to Iran over its detention of U.S. citizens, but there have not been any restrictions yet.
“The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran, steps that could end this designation and associated actions,” Rubio said at the time.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Gérard Araud, the highly connected former French ambassador to the United States, said Ursula von der Leyn is exceeding the powers of her mandate by tapping into foreign policy while pushing a German-like approach in an interview with Euronews.
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From Ukraine peace negotiations to the ongoing war in Iran, von der Leyen has managed to grow her role closer to that of a head of state in a move not without controversy.
Von der Leyen was the first EU official to call for a political transition in Iran in line with the goals of the United States and Israel, who have openly called for regime change in Tehran, and have urged the bloc to seek a more pragmatic approach to foreign policy.
“She’s [acting outside of] her competence,” Araud said on Euronews’ interview programme 12 Minutes With on Tuesday, a day after von der Leyen addressed a conference of EU ambassadors in which she declared the world order conceived after the Second World War to be over and never to return.
**”**The Treaties of the European Union, which is the basis of the EU, do not give her any special competence in foreign policy,” he added, calling her remarks “surprising.”
In the same conference, von der Leyen made headlines in Brussels after she suggested the EU would always defend the rules-based system, but it can “no longer be a custodian of the old-world order” or assume its rules will shelter Europe in the future.
Araud said her comments are problematic as the EU seeks to cement new partnerships across the world by presenting itself as the last bastion of international rules and respect for fundamental values in a brutal, increasingly chaotic world.
“Europeans are the last flag bearers of international law,” he said. “It’s a bit like someone committing adultery while saying ‘I am in favour of the principles of marital fidelity’.’
In 2019, as von der Leyen assumed her first mandate, she vowed to make the European Commission a geopolitical actor. But her power moves into foreign policy have not gone unnoticed across European capitals, with relations with Israel becoming a point of tension between EU member states, seen as supportive, critics and the Commission.
Her complicated relationship with Kaja Kallas, the European foreign policy chief and EU High Representative, has also led to a cacophony of views when it comes to foreign policy, an area where the EU historically struggles to unite 27 voices.
Her positioning since the start of the war in Iran “is not in line with Spain, and it’s not in line with France, it’s a German line,” Araud said.
Araud, who made a name for himself in European diplomatic circles after a stint as French ambassador in the US from 2014 to 2019, said Trump has miscalculated the ramifications of attacking Iran, which he described as far more complicated than Venezuela, where the US was easily able to swap the leadership to a more friendly one.
“What is the goal of this operation? At the beginning, it was regime change, then it was the nuclear programme, and now it’s a question of destroying the Iranian military apparatus,” Araud said. “He thought he would encounter a situation closer to Venezuela, but that hasn’t worked…Iran has made the choice of waiting.”
The former French ambassador to Israel said he also worries Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “dragged the US” into a war without a clear plan and cautioned that Israel will not stop in its main objective of becoming the main player in the region, even if that means another round of military escalation and broader conflict in the region.
“There is a trauma after October 7th. For Israel, it cannot go back to the (scenario) that existed before that, and now it is about a new regime in the Middle East. Until now, they have been successful. But the biggest obstacle remains Iran.”
Asked how the war could end, he said Trump could play the TACO card — an acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out — which could see the US President declaring victory and settling for a half-cooked resolution. Still, Araud said he does not believe Israel will leave its objectives incomplete when it comes to Iran. “I don’t think they will stop,” he said.
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