Arming and Funding Cartels | CBS Reports

drug cartels in Mexico have been terrorizing Americans for decades we're going to unleash the fury and might to the United States against these cartels politicians are calling for war on cartels is the United States federal government going to control our Southern border are we going to let the Mexican drug cartels do it to combat the crisis at America's Southern border tonight the country is bracing for a migration influx stop this illicit drug trafficking it's killing Americans everywhere in this country this has been a major bipartisan failure of the United States government for many decades now there is no accountability but an unprecedented intelligence project reveals like who knows about this seems like I've told everybody I go CIA goes yeah I go FBI I go yeah I go DEA go yeah the front line of this battle is where we least expect just pulled out a 9mm wrapped in plastic which is still dripping in gasoline here at out of the gas tank it's got this AR-15 that was hidden in this rear seat we have allowed the cartels to amass an army please name of the game right so where are we going we are going to meet with uh some gang members and they're going to show us how they smuggle uh all these type of weapons uh from the US into Mexico these guys are sort of a part of a network that supplies guns to the cartel yes these guns that we're going to see these guns are going to kill people Miguel anel Vega is a journalist who was born and raised in the heart of cartel territory we hired him to help us gain access to gun trafficking operations from the US into Mexico this could be any Town USA could be anywhere we're on the trail of Gun Runners crisscrossing the American West the path was leading South across the border even though there's a long long line of cars trying to get into Mexico the checks have got to be very very rudimentary at best because we've been we've pretty much been consistently moving We're stopped here photographed and that's it I have not seen a single vehicle stopped and pulled over so we just received a pin drop from one of our contacts we're not going to any touristic destination here right we're going to C land this feels really sketch we are about to see American weapons in the hands of Mexican ctoons Mexico has incredibly strict gun laws making it next to impossible for civilians to buy firearms only one gun store exists for the entire country and it's on a military base to get Firearms criminals have to smuggle them in oh wow just pulled out a 9mm wrapped in plastic out of the gas tank it's got this AR-15 that was hidden in this rear seat he can hide guns in the door panels in the tires The Smuggler said that he can hide upwards of 30 plus guns at any given time in a small Sedan like this effectively a mule for for these weapons going into Mexico this is crazy how much do you make when you do this five $5,000 for one Crossing FY FY very easy to get these arms in in America are you a US citizen or a Mexican citizen both the US announced recently that I was cracking down on gun trafficking from the US into Mexico are you at all afraid of what the US government might do and what kind of an impact that might have on your on your business no no you're not afraid no so nothing has changed no normal two cartels control the vast majority of gun and drug trafficking in and out of the US halisco New Generation better known by its acronym cjng and caloa despite high-profile arrests their smuggling operations have been growing a CBS reports investigation found that Americans have been aiding narcos to smuggle military grade weapons out of of the US into Mexico at a scale and sophistication unknown to the American public this story is based on exclusively obtained government documents and interviews with half a dozen current and former officials with direct knowledge as well as senior members of the caloa cartel so we are arming the cartels 100% no doubt about it I worked for ATF for approximately 25 years I work Street guns and Drug crime can you tell me a little bit more about your role particularly around trafficking of of guns towards the end of my career um I had an excellent opportunity to work in a really unique Place Chris Dem line was assigned to the drug enforcement administration's intelligence Hub in Washington DC known as Special Operations Division I had an Intel analyst come to me one day who had specialized in the cartels for years and he said to me hey I've got some stuff you may want to see it was instantly apparent that the cartels had large scale covert weapons trafficking Networks all across the US from coast to coast from north to south and that they were funneling thousands of guns into Mexico to fuel the drug war I asked him I said who's doing something about this and he said he said nobody I was like holy crap like are you serious he's like yeah like who knows about this he's like I've told everybody I said CIA he goes yeah I go FBI I go yeah I go DEA I go yeah they all tell me it's a gun problem that would fall with ATF and I went well you want to do something about it and he was like yeah that something became the first US intelligence project focused on International gun trafficking launched in 2018 until then law enforcement had been conducting operations mostly focused on busting individual low-level Gun Runners instead this new Mission would attempt to identify and take down entire smuggling networks whether they were Democrat whether they Republican they were proun they were anti-gun everybody came together to focus on on the problem for the good of the nation they called it Thor the full scope of the project and its operations have never been reported until now why are you talking about project Thor now this is the story the American people need to know what are we looking at here this is the creation of intelligence data from all over the United States can we see how and where one of the major cartels is able to procure its weapons essentially these are like hubs so you think of terrorist sales these are like individual cells okay in a matter of months project Thor discovered dozens of cartel gun running networks this is just one example of how the cj& cartel had been trafficking Firearms law enforcement had missed them for years the cartels have their fingers across the country and they're able to pull firearms from all over the country and they do here's how it works when narcos want guns they activate a phone tree calling accompli who live across the US this is not a Southwest border issue we've got Wisconsin we've got Portland up here or Racine up there right this exclusively obtained intelligence map shows where this is happening every pinpoint is a gun purchase traced directly to cartel violence Thor track buyers as far north as Maine and even Alaska men and women that were US citizens right didn't have a criminal history and could purchase guns these people are paid to buy weapons and ammo then illegally pass them off to Brokers couriers pick up those guns and drive them across the Southwest border into Mexico and into the hands of cartels prior to project Thor the ATF concluded that the timeline from purchase in the US to use in a violent crime in Mexico was more than one year but project Thor tracked orders from a purchase to an assassination attempt in less than one month project Thor wasn't just about hey we have this problem but we came up with a solution in 2022 the US Department of Justice announced the sentencing of an Oklahoma man project Thor discovered was providing arms to cartels this case that you'll hear about today is part of operation Thor this case was the first Mexican cartel firearm parts exportation and Manufacturing case to be indicted in the United States demine and his team connected hundreds of Investigations across four different law enforcement agencies Thor helped solve those cases put American accomplices in prison and tracked down the Narcos in charge so they could cut off entire Supply chains they were quietly awarded the distinguished service medal in 2021 not only did they Advance this new Mission outside of their regular duties but they also contined to push and transform the ATF culture into one that is intelligence LED extremely well done job we're talking about Thor in the past tense is is Thor gone Thor um as our project is is is gone it's no more I was told priorities in the US government shifted the money was gone in response to CBS reports investigative findings the Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms acknowledged that American Gun running networks are the primary supplier of military Gade weapons to Mexican drug cartels but senior Justice officials said they were not familiar with project Thor the truth is the US was turning a blind eye to the you know the flow of weapons illegally into Mexico that is outrageous most American an have no idea that we are effectively arming the enemy next door you are correct you are correct this has been a major bipartisan failure of the United States government for many decades now you wouldn't believe when I was Raising this issue there were people in the government who said no they're not really military weapons that go to Mexico it's just handguns but then to me you're you're missing the point they're purchasing you know serious killing power they're seeking a level of Weaponry that outguns Mexican law enforcement authorities we see machine guns like the m134 minigun kit for instance which is used by the American Military and is capable of shooting 2,000 to 4,000 rounds per minute increasingly people buy military grade weapons online some websites function like door dash for guns people can order for pickup or delivery this gun is perfect for shooting targets or defending yourself against other attackers it's also perfect for hunting game when I put a uh 50 cal machine gun into my cart and then I could dism and so it's just a few clicks a lot easier than I expected it is easier to buy guns in America than almost anywhere else in the world thanks to its unique constitutional right to bear arms and cartels take advantage of that freedom this has nothing to do with our Second Amendment rights I mean I'm a constitutional lawyer there's no conceivable Second Amendment right to send weapons out of the United States to countries where they are illegal and in fact violating United States export control law in the process demine agreed to demonstrate some of the Firepower cartels have been getting their hands on to understand what Mexican law enforcement is up against going on ready that was a Barrett 50 caliber rifle just one example of the type of firearm that project door Trace directly from Mexican cartels back to purchases in the US this is in fact a weapon that is in the hands of the cartel but somewhere in an American Store yes and the cartels have deployed these against the Mexican military oh yeah they're fighting it back against with your uh 223 556 round so this is the cartels that's the Mexican military that's what you got yeah wow not quite uh symmetrical here little desparate yeah yeah these Firearms could be equipped with armor-piercing rounds capable of lethal force from more than a mile away for this demonstration Dem line placed a reinforc Target 100 yards away okay let's go see what we did looks like we hit dead center through this armor plating a body and another cinder block wall so through the building through armor through a body and out the other side of the building they're just they're tearing them apart tearing them apart we're going to unleash the fury and might of the United States against these cartels a growing chorus of political leaders have been sounding the alarm pushing to designate cartel's terrorists deploy the military and declare war [Music] but Mexico is a US Ally and its government decries any potential use of American military force as a violation of its National sovereignty we traveled to a Naro stronghold just over the Southwest border with Arizona to find out how cartels would react if the US attacked this man says he's a lieutenant in the caloa cartel he wouldn't reveal his identity as a condition of speaking publicly would the cartel respond if the US military [Music] struck so the guns are a way to protect business [Music] interests do you fear for your life have we learned nothing from Afghanistan Iraq we are going to get caught in a quicksand I if we go into Mexico that will make Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan look like a tea party certainly seems to me as somebody who was US ambassador to Mexico that that is the very last alternative you consider once you have exhausted every other alternative it's like strategy 101 if we were supplying Isis with bombs the first thing we would do is say America we're stopping supplying Isis with bombs in the spring of 2023 the Biden Administration announced it was making it a top priority to stop cartel smuggling operations we are sending dangerous weapons particularly assault weap to Mexico to Mexico they're asking us please stop it cut it off at the border but in God's name we could be coming if we don't do this the government focused on gun seizures at the border as well as diplomatic negotiations to train and equip Mexican law enforcement nearly 2,000 Firearms were seized from last October to just this past March that's a more than 65% increase over the same period last year according to the Mexican Government that number 2,000 guns is how much the cartel smuggle in a single day Troy Miller is in charge of America's border agency as we sit here hundreds of guns thousands of guns are going from the US into Mexico on a daily basis what are we doing about the guns flowing into the hands of the cartels we've been pulsing and surging operations along the Southwest border to to look for weapons and then increase our information sharing with our partners in Mexico I could drive across the border with guns in my car and the chances are I'm going to be successful is it an incumbent upon CBP to be checking to make sure that weapons are not Crossing into Mexico it's a joint responsibility you know we are also responsible for checking everything that's coming into the country but as somebody who drove back and forth multiple times no one looked we're working on these issues very closely with our Mexican partners and we can do better every day when I was in Mexico I would have meetings with the Mexican Government about gun issues and and you know my staff would prepare for me a list of bullet points to raise at the meeting I said well I want to see the bullet points prepared for the last Ambassador and the Ambassador before that and guess what they were the same bullet points we've been talking about this for 10 20 years nothing is changing right I don't think that's acceptable the murder rate in Mexico has gone up sixfold 600% and it's not because of anything but really the cartels and the ab their ability to access Firearms we're basically just turning a blind eye to that you have people who are trying to flee the country because of insecurity and violence 100% if that was the murder rate in my country I'd be trying to get the heck out as well with my family they own the country nobody is going to bring any of them to justice even if they can figure out who did it right oh yeah [Music] yeah so what do we know someone was shot uh to death we're in kakan Mexico ground zero for the caloa cartel maybe so we've just come to the scene of a a homicide uh all we really know at this point is that one person was shot and killed in a pretty quiet residential area just off a main uh thoroughfare here project Thor discovered that as much as 85% of cartel Firearms found at crime scenes traced back to the US how often is it that the cartels are linked this kind of violence often very often I would dare to say all the time when I start you see that car yeah that's the victim's car is there much of an investigation that happens here no I think kakan Carter related murders they are like in complete impunity now is that because they're powerful is that because they have bought off police because they are powerful and because they are in the payroll of the cartel I don't want to say all of them sure but you know generally speaking right that's that's how powerful the cartels are gun violence in Mexico has been getting worse Firearms are responsible for seven out of every 10 homicides that's hundreds of thousands of people killed with American weapons in fact more civilians were killed over the last 15 years than the War on Drugs here than the entire Wars on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan combined we're having zero impact and you can see our strategies as the United States is completely ineffective we need to do something else we have not done that in federal law enforcement the United States is basically allowing those guns to flow to Mexico to fight The Mexican government to produce more Fentanyl and then pump it into our country country when we have the ability to shut down the pipeline here or at least curtail it greatly the government is aware and has chosen to allow this to sort of just sit in the vault there are a few career people that are still in that know about project Thor some of those people are pushing it some of those people are not but the blueprint is there somebody just has to dust it off and go okay this is what we're going to do and you have hope that work can live on absolutely and there's people suffering because we're not solving our own problem of letting those guns go do we have the power and the might and the capability to do that no doubt so let's do [Music] it [Music] [Music] up next the caloa cartel supplies most of the fentanyl in the US if the US stopped buying drugs what would happen to the [Music] cartel our country is being invaded this is a war drugs are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year every shipment of Sentinel is a ticking Time Bomb every life lost to fenel is a tragedy every one of those pills is an unregulated pharmaceutical that can stuff out your life like that you're playing Russian Rel as Mexican cartels flood the country with illegal painkillers the caloa cartel supplies most of the fentanyl in the US and is largely responsible for more than 100,000 overdose deaths in 2021 alone this is not like cocaine or heroin this is a synthetic people in the United States say oh these drugs are all coming from Mexico but it's only part of the story CBS reports Journeys to a cartel stronghold they're probably checking us out if they haven't already it is said that all the names of the passengers Landing in K the cartel know who they are to uncover why the US government is failing to stop them what is your role in the caloa [Music] cartel [Music] Ashley was she was a different kid she was beautiful and smart and funny and social she was a mom his beautiful son she was a free spirit she was just an amazing human she's not with us anymore what happened on May 23rd of 2021 she purchased four tablets from a lifetime drug dealer and then she was poisoned to death by half a taet of what she thought was PR but contained 5 Mig of fen one half of one tablet a lot of the PSA say one pill can kill but it was actually one half of the pill that killed her the grief of of losing a child is immense it's like strangles you you can't breathe thank you for sharing your story it's really important because this is unlike the drugs that we saw anytime before no I don't think you ever recover from a loss of a child I don't think you do I just think you learn to live with it but you don't heal from it instead you fight my government's going to do something I believe that with all my heart fentanyl was designed as a miracle painkiller especially to help cancer patients but over the past decade illicitly produced fenyl became the most commonly abused drug in America and the world's deadliest opioid knockoffs supercharged an epidemic and renewed a rallying cry for the US War on Drugs the caloa cartel supplies most of the fentanyl in the US 50 times more powerful than heroin plaguing communities and destroying lives from coast to coast the most common cause of poisoning deaths of children one of the most pressing National Security and public health challenges costing the nation an estimated $1 trillion dollar a year every shipment of fenel is a ticking Time Bomb every life lost to fenel is a tragedy [Music] this port of entry sees more fenel than any other Port of Entry in the US in fact over half of it is interdicted here and the problem just keeps growing and growing and growing in the first 6 months of 2023 officers have seized more fenol than they had in the last 5 years combined you see a lot of 200,000 pill loads we've seen all the way up to 1.6 billion pills in a load the numbers are so astronomical every one of those pills is an unregulated pharmaceutical that get stuff out your life like that yeah so that's 200,000 bullets in a gun you're playing Russian roulette every time you you take one of these bills it's being made in a warehouse someplace in Mexico I was Ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021 tell me about about the US and its war on the cartels War on Drugs we've been trying to eradicate uh drugs and get that issue under control for 50 years and frankly have not been very successful I think the problem has gotten worse we're facing really a new kind of problem so I'm particularly concerned about what that means for where we go from here in 2023 the White House announced a Crackdown against illicit fenal Supply chains President Biden asked Congress for more than $46 billion to do it so let's launch a major surge to stop fentanyl production in the sale and trafficking with more drug detection machines inspection cargo stop pills and powder at the border Troy Miller is in charge of America's border agency I think CBP is well positioned to lead the government in our counter fenel efforts this last year we had an operation called Blue Lotus where we surged resources to uh California and Arizona and we seize 10,000 lbs of fentanyl in two months operations are temporary do you have the resources and the commitment from the federal government to really tackle this in a way that will have a measurable impact it is one of our top priorities do we need additional resources to continue to do what we're doing uh yes this is not like cocaine or heroin this is a synthetic um so it's very difficult to estimate what we're catching and what we're not seizures uh don't necessarily uh mean anything other than we're season more drugs we're going to continue to figure out ways to affect the supply chain aren't these strategies though the same strategies that we've employed for decades now what's different I think our Partnerships are better than ever we're never going to stop narcotics completely but I believe that we can have an effect on on Fentanyl and the folks that are smuggling fentanyl officials concede that seizing drugs is only one step in curbing the power of the cartels to find out how cartels maintain the upper hand in this battle we have to go beyond the Border [Music] this is in AA cartel territory absolutely you've dealt with them many many years now yes they know me I know them Miguel anela is a journalist born and raised in the heart of Narco territory we hired a to show us aide of this cartel stronghold that only locals usually get to see this is kulia Khan home base for the caloa cartel fortified by a vast surveillance Network roughly how many people are we talking about we're talking at least 2000 people wow in the city all over the city all over the city not to mention the cigar gun man they're probably checking us out if they haven't already it is said that all the names of the passengers Landing in K the car don't know who they are still there is a sense of fear that might be an undercover officer The Landing in kakan you can make a phone call they give me tracking entire conversation they have TRS they have technology they can corrupt all all this of violence in the city the cartels have access to some of the most sophisticated spyware technology in the world you have used it to launch targeted counter offensives against anyone trying to investigate them so any electronic communication we should assume that we're being monitored like me yeah you never see them but they see [Music] you that was just a sort of a performance and an homage to Jesus mde who is a sort of a a folkloric figure he is sort of known as the Robin Hood um for drug traffickers people come to this Shrine to pay homage to uh leave their uh US dollar blessings this is evidence of just how revered Jesus Mel Verde is here the cartel is so deeply entrenched here that Naros are practically indistinguishable from locals who act as important allies you're going to see all these baseball cops yeah with uh you know images or figures related to the Nar chap here you see the initials of Pingo era you see all the drug lords locally these guys are they're revered they're like Heroes Heroes when I was like 12 years old and I used to speak with my classmates like you know what do you want to be when you grow older and they we used to tell Narco they don't want to be the next Michael Jordan they want to be the next Cho despite being one of the world's biggest economies Mexico consistently underperforms according to the World Bank more than 40% of the population lives below the poverty line let's say the idea that Americans would want to wipe out cartels would not sit well with people here it's not like they're going to fight for them but if they can they will protect this narcos but these cartels are also responsible for Untold violence and death the way the people say it here is they don't mess with us so we're fine narcos commit the vast majority of murders across Mexico and are notorious for their particularly gruesome killing tactics they Criminal and we know that sooner or later they will have to pay Vega says it's not just in life that cartel members are revered that around here even in death their influence and Status cast a long Shadow this is cemio Hardin deuma Hardin deuma cemetery and you're going to see some massive [Music] tombs Vega says this is the opulent final resting place of former drug lords and their loved ones this is like five stor building and it is actually a tomb this is a replica of the Tash Mahal wow I don't think I've ever seen Cemetery quite like this like this one right here this could be like a little condo these are house sizes there are no inscriptions whatsoever no dates no names nothing I spoke to one of the Architects and he was telling me like this tomb for example half million dollars American dollars because it's Florentine marble they have a and TV and a kitchen also this is insane swear that you were driving through a residential neighborhood us Southern command estimates that transnational criminal organizations make $310 billion a year and disrupting that money flow is a critical part of the Biden administration's drug control strategy they do that largely by monitoring electronic transactions but drug deals are conducted mostly with cash if cartels took that money to a bank the government P trce it to specific people and arrest them to avoid that they turn to streets like this where they can exchange dollars for pesos off the books what are we looking at here you see all these umbrellas yeah the these women are dollar exch Changers uhhuh you're going to see a whole bunch of this wow like maybe 300 I'm going to ask you know what's the rate I'm going to just stop yeah here's two young women here but every now and then like someone comes alone with half million dollars half million and they go like I want to exchange this so money laundering is like coursing through the city the government knows this every single person in this city we all know that according to the US defense department Mexico's drug cartels control more than a third of the entire country in 2019 Mexico's president created a new militarized police force that he called the National Guard but frequently their Firepower is outmatched by the cartels who are armed with an arsenal of weapons that they smuggle in from the US the US government is aware that these criminal organizations are armed up with Weaponry coming from the US one of their main sources of power how is it that morison being done that was one of the conclusions that I came to very quickly after arriving in Mexico as Ambassador that we could and should be making a priority in this this is not dea's issue as Ambassador I tried to shift the focus to this issue I asked the justice department to brief me on what was being done in our country to try to curb this flow of weapons we talk about these Mexican criminal organizations and how bad they are but we have responsibility from the United States for for arming them in June of 2023 the Biden Administration announced it was making it a new priority to to stop cartels from smuggling Firearms out of the country and Senior Justice officials acknowledged that the US is a source of the Lion Share of guns trafficked into Mexico people question whether police and the armed forces are really there to protect the population for decades Mexican law enforcement has been linked to Human Rights abuses including forced disappearances torture and extrajudicial killings including that of five unarmed civilians caught on video in the spring of 2020 3 the government violated human rights that for sure that happened and not so long time ago corruption in Mexico has affected every single part of its institutions not only at the federal level but state and local uh levels uh as well and we are fighting corruption very seriously the cartel has deep deep roots within the country that makes it so appealing so for so many people thankfully we are investing uh a lot of resources on small and mediumsized communities because this is where uh the problem has developed and and by the way in a lot of those communities people actually like the cartels more than they like the government well I mean uh I know where you're coming from that's that's we heard that for for for our I I I I I have I do not think that um that's the case there was a big problem that's for sure and you are right we need to acknowledge that we do not acknowledge we had that problem then we cannot move forward still a long way ahead but we are in the right direction got take this call you got to take this call drug cartels are not completely underground here they function more like a shadow government and can be reached with the right connections okay what's the L this man is going to talk to us who is this this is a major uh player inside the singal W carto it's not just anybody he's Way High Way High what I when I say way high it's someone who troubles China goes to uh South America he goes to Europe everywhere the S cartel has its tentacles yes it's one of the uh decision makers what do you know of this location usually that's where they dump the bodies the executions they dumped bodies in this neighborhood so yeah I know you ready yes I am tell me when we need to turn off the cameras yeah I think by now you should put the cameras down half km turn right all right here we go what is your role in the caloa [Music] cartel this man wouldn't reveal his identity as a condition of speaking publicly about sino's criminal operations he said he's been a narco for 30 years you're taking a risk by allowing us to come meet with you [Music] here he told us that while the US government has been fighting a drug war American citizens have been funding and arming the cartels how fast can you get a weapon of war from the US here to caloa in a day wow the drug money buys more guns for you if the US stopped buying drugs what would happen to the cartel the US government calls the caloa cartel one of the most dangerous narot terrorist organizations in the world so are you a terrorist [Music] group he acknowledged the US let Crackdown said they were putting some parts of their fentel supply chain on pause but considered it a temporary [Music] setback and how quickly do you think that things will return to normal kakan is just one city in regions all across Mexico Naros are still producing fenel and smuggling record shipments into the US US intelligence estimates that cartels are actually trafficking four times the amount law enforcement seizes at the border we're not going to interdict our way out of this problem we are fueling um the cartel's ability to run this trade it's just a vicious cycle that continues people in the United States say oh these drugs are all coming from Mexico Mexico's got to fix this problem which is certainly a legitimate point but it's only part of the story right because another part of the story is the money the guns nothing thing we're doing is changing yet the problem is only growing that is correct every passing year that is correct and I I do not see to this day any kind of recognition by the US government that this is something that uh requires new thinking and I think it's a failure of imagination frankly on our part we are facing a crisis the likes of which we have never seen before we have we have been waging a drug war for many many decades it's not gotten better it's only gotten worse where's the long-term win here ultimately uh success is going to be less deaths of American people our country is being invaded maybe not by soldiers maybe not by bombs but it's being invaded by drugs we are arming them while our citizens are dying this is a war but we're not fighting it we're being killed

Channel: CBS News

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Keywords: cbs news, news, live news, livestream, breaking news, US, cartels in mexico now, cartels, cartel, border patrol, police, drugs, mexico, authorities, full episodes, documentary, movie, drug cartels, world news, america, mexican cartels

Id: 8JsvNSmLxa0

Length: 45min 5sec (2705 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023