My name's Ed Calderon. I'm a former Baja police agent. I currently work as a security consultant in the United States. This is how crime works. Gun smuggling has armed the people that killed a lot of the people
that I used to work with. A lot of these groups are actually stockpiling these firearms for long periods of time. It's hard for anybody
to keep track of numbers and what gets found and
what doesn't get found in a country where realistically
nobody's keeping count. I think the flow is this. Drugs make their way north, and firearms and money
make their way south. 70% of all firearms come from the north, from the United States. Operación Hormiga, they
call it Operation Ant. Basically, individuals
carrying these small pistols across the border is a very common thing. So, how many times can
they cross the border? Well, if they're
Americans, there's no limit to how many times they
can cross that border. It's a pretty easy process
to grabbing an AK-47, taking it apart into its basic components, putting it in a backpack, and just walking across some of the ports of entry. Another one is just basically having some of these firearms duct-taped and/or shrink-wrapped onto your person. So, let's imagine I have five mules. Each of them is capable of carrying around probably two guns on their legs, duct-taped to their legs, maybe two more higher up on their thighs, and maybe two on their chest. Just multiply that by the amount of people you have doing that on a daily basis, filling their pockets with ammunition, filling Corn Flakes boxes
with ammunition as well. Tijuana is basically Silicon Valley when it comes to finding
ways of smuggling things in through one of the most-watched borders on the planet, basically. There's body shops. There's places that install radios. There's a bunch of people
with a lot of experience in modifying vehicles down there. These businesses have been
known to basically construct some of these concealment
compartments in vehicles. Many occasions, we would
encounter or find firearms of different kinds in
different vehicle hides in and around some of the
places where we operated. Things like pushing the
volume knob on the radio and then pulling the brake on the car will release a latch on
the passenger-side seat revealing a concealed firearm. American vehicles are the preferred kind. You'll see recreational vehicles utilizing festive days where, you know, spring break, where you'll see a surge of traffic going from the north to the south. A lot of the smuggling
operations that have utilized concealment related to
regular commercial shipments from the United States into Mexico of agricultural equipment,
electrical appliances. A lot of these companies are
basically utilized as fronts. And/or without knowledge
of these companies, they get loaded up with extra stuff on their way towards the border as they pick up a load
somewhere in the United States and try and introduce it into Mexico. Another aspect of it is
tunnels, drug tunnels. Again, firearms do get moved
through those drug tunnels that have been operating
and are still operating. Some of the most interesting
ones that we managed to see was French-style trebuchets, which are basically giant catapults flinging things across the
border at some ungodly speeds. Drone technology. The
first crashed cartel drone that I directly saw was a large quad drone that crashed right on the border where the Tijuana River
treatment plant is. We saw remote-control vehicles. Small ones, toy ones, basically, loaded up with firearms,
munitions, and money being driven across the
border by radio control. This is not my opinion, but the Border Patrol is one of the most corrupted federal institutions
in the United States. There's been many cases and
convictions against them. And it's, these gun runners
have people everywhere and have and own people in
some of these ports of entry and pay corrupted officials
across the border. It is interesting that
you do not get searched at all at times crossing into Mexico, but if you cross into San Diego, your vehicle gets scanned, you
have to step out of the car, sometimes you have to
take off your backpack and put it into an X-ray
machine so it gets X-rayed. Density scanners might be
utilized to try and detect some of the firearms
going across the border, but those X-rays are used sporadically. Every now and then
you'll get one get used, and it's rare that they find something. There's explosive-detection dogs that are out there that are
trained to detect explosives. Munitions, for example. But, again, you have to realize, to not only create a dog, canine program that is able to detect
some of these things, but to maintain them,
is not an easy thing. In my experience, most of the arrests that we made were pitazos. A pitazo is a Mexican slang word for "somebody told on them." Usually it's a personal thing, or usually it's somebody
just eliminating competition. Those vehicle hides, a
lot of these gun runners that have been caught in the past were random acts of pure luck or somebody trying to
cut the competition out. 20-year-olds, 18-year-olds
that have a clean record get hired to buy some of these
guns in some of these places. And then they get gathered
by the gun runners. Somebody that has a vehicle,
who's a retiree American that crosses the border regularly somehow, maybe goes camping in
Baja and stuff like that, is a perfect candidate to
be a mule for firearms. And you'll load a bunch of cars with people that are not
who you typically expect to stop at the border. So they basically utilize people camouflage. What do people expect to see on the border as far as a drug smuggler? So they're going to shy away from that. Women get utilized a lot, a
lot, to move things around. Older women, because
of the cultural stigma of Mexican police agents as far trying to search,
physically search a female, much less a female that is older in age. Social media is a very big part of it. Not only the advertisement
of some of these things being sold in some places, but also recruitment of
small-purchase buyers on the US side. Cartels will troll places like TikTok, will have social-media accounts related to one of their members or showcasing some of
their activities online, and you'll see wannabes
or people sending DMs and stuff like that on the US side. Kids that want to be a
part of the lifestyle. It's easy money for a kid, you know? The economy, the lack of opportunities for a lot of the young people. Even with educations down
there, it's hard to find a job. I was approached several
times when I was going through my process of turning
into a police officer, and it only takes you doing something for a criminal organization like any of these cartels
that operate on that border, it only takes once for
them to know your name, to know how to contact you, to know that you are able
to provide a service. Once. And the first time, it's voluntary. The second time, they're going
to tell you to do something. The person buying that
gun and then handing it to somebody that's going to
then traffic it down south, he got probably $200. So that's the first payment, you know? And then that gun is now going to be probably doubled down south, or maybe 80% more of the value's going to be added on to it. So you have something
that might be worth $800, and now it's worth $1,500 down there in the hands of somebody
that wants that specific gun. The further south you go, the
more expensive the firearm. That's kind of the rules about it. The closer you are to the
border, the cheaper it is. The gun runner might have connections, and he might have paid somebody off. Usually if it's a large shipment, he'll have security with
him as soon as he crosses. By this, I mean people
that are watching the load and move with him. You know, some of these
people might drive it to a body shop or they might drive it to one of these beach resorts where you can park your camper there, and that is when the deal happens. That could be where some
money gets exchanged. It could have gotten exchanged
on the northern side, but that's when the guns become property of whoever's going to get them. I've seen some of the gun runners put guns into places like Tecate, which is to the east in the desert, and basically in traditional
places where they can avoid military
checkpoints if they can. Or sometimes they don't even care because they actually paid off
some of the military as well. It is not an easy process to procure a legal firearm in Mexico. Mexico has a single blanket firearms law. There's a single firearms store in Mexico. If anybody wants a
firearm legally in Mexico, you have to be able to pay
for a bunch of documentations, and you usually end up
with a overpriced pistol and not a lot of ways to
buy bullets for that pistol unless you belong to a shooting club. And if you belong to a
shooting club in Mexico, that's a very expensive thing. So, in essence, legal
possession of firearms is something that upper-middle-class
people can afford. So people are desperate,
and if they want security, usually in Mexico as a civilian, you'll go into the black market. Most of the gun-friendly
places on the border are usually where these
things are purchased. Texas, Arizona, sometimes
even further north where person-to-person
sales and private sales are more permitted, where gun
shows are pretty prevalent. Somebody will walk into a gun store and buy and purchase a couple of firearms. And some of these things
get moved from a permissive, or a place where firearm laws are pretty, you know, pretty open to places like California.
And the reason you see that is because they're actually being utilized to pay drug loads sometimes. You also have a lot of people ordering some of these firearm
parts through the mail now, which is a new method
of smuggling as well. People will buy some of these
things in the United States and then mail them down to
Mexico under false labels and declarations as far as
what's inside of those boxes, for accessories, for
firearms, and being gathered in a private home, packaged
and labeled falsely, and then sent south
through packaging services. There's been many cases
of things being taken off military bases in California, for example. Grenades that are clearly coming from military installations
in the United States and/or are taken from military
bases by corrupted soldiers. Every now and then you'll see bigger-caliber equipment down there. The truth is those account for about 70% of illegal firearms found in Mexico in the hands of cartels and murder scenes and in the heads of dead sicarios. The truth is that it's
probably more than that. They assassinate political candidates. They use explosives, terror tactics, psychological tactics, they
capture, imprison people. Right now currently
there's the Sinaloa Cartel that's historically been
dominating the border and a big part of Mexico, but now there's the New Generation Cartel, which is a very new
ultraviolent, militarized, almost guerilla force that has taken over. And with groups like these, they have very specific
firearms that they want to buy. So they're not only looking for a gold-plated AK-47 anymore, they're actually looking
for night-vision equipment to install on their firearms. They're looking for suppressors to put on a .50-caliber precision
rifle that they procure. You'll see these
commercial-gun manufacturers making a very cool,
aesthetically cartel-like pistol. It's obvious if you have a gun company creating a gold gun for a civilian market that they're trying to tap into a fascination and/or a culture that is currently going to be
and foster a narco culture. A narco cultura, or narco culture, is something that's been going
on in Mexico for decades. The fascination or the treatment of some of these criminal organizations as almost a Robin Hood-type character, where they're robbing from the rich and stealing from the poor. I can't tell you that making guns impossible to get or restricted or illegal, something like you would see in Australia, would be a solution to anything, because guns are already out there. There's a lot of people that want to blame the
United States for everything. Like, I think they clearly
have responsibility when it comes to some of the
firearms crossing that border. You have the United States basically outsourcing
its counter-drug policy and counter-cartel policy
to Mexico through money. The United States, I would say, should do a better job of keeping track of what that money's
being used for in Mexico. Some of the arrests that
have been made recently by American law enforcement sharing some of their
information with Mexico, like sights, lasers,
things of this nature, for accessories for firearms, basically, this is what every now
and then gets caught. But, again, it's a drop in the bucket with what actually gets through. When we saw some of this
activity, and who do we tell? Do we tell the same
law-enforcement agencies that didn't let us know about all those guns
walking across that border that ended up killing a bunch
of my friends? You know? It was my experience to
actually find some of these "Fast and the Furious"
guns during my time active, in the form of some FN
Five-seven pistols that were used on some of my friends
that I used to work with. This was an ATF operation. The ATF would approach places of gun sales and keep an eye out for certain types of purchases of firearms. The ATF wanted to let these guns walk so they can track them down to Mexico to see if they can somehow make
a case for something bigger. But realistically, all they did was let almost 2,000 guns walk across the border. And most Mexicans saw that as a major, not only betrayal by the United States, but also a bunch of conspiracy theories started popping up of, you know, why would you introduce so
many firearms into Mexico? The anti-American sentiment in Mexico is at an all-time high,
and it's been growing. I think as a Mexican, somebody who was actually born down there and experienced some of the violence that some of these firearms
help foster down there, I think the biggest
misconception about gun smuggling is that these guns, somehow there's a lot of
effort being put forth by the Mexican government to stop these guns from
coming down to Mexico. The straw purchasers up here
get a slap on the wrist. I think, yeah, some of those
penalties should be steeper. The Mexican government
through Marcelo Ebrard has basically sued a lot of the major American gun manufacturers. The only group legally allowed to sell firearms in
Mexico is the military. So it's interesting that
the Mexican government did a lawsuit against
American gun manufacturers, but they didn't mention in that lawsuit the people that they
buy their firearms from. Mexico has a very big
problem with corruption. And it has attempted many times to curtail this corruption by
developing whole organizations to try and keep police honest. I was put through FBI background checks. I did polygraph testing every year. But even with all of
those safety precautions, people flipped. And when they left, they didn't hand over their
rifles or their guns sometimes, so they would take them with them. I was a Baja police
agent for about 12 years. I did that job till it was, till it was time to leave. The corruption levels in the institution that I was in became
completely unsustainable. And anybody that wanted
to actually do their job and be honest about it was not in fashion or
in vogue at that time. I had to leave my job in a hurry. There's no retirement,
no severance package. It's a pretty hard job to do. It's a thankless one. But there's a lot of people
that are in that fight. A lot of people that are honest. A lot of people that never took a dime. I somehow made it out
alive of that system. After concluding my 12
years of service down there, I came to the United States, and utilizing some of the
experience and know-how that I got from that
experience down south, I've now become a subject-matter expert and do training for civilians, private companies, and the
government across the country. Specifically gun smuggling
has armed the people that killed a lot of the people
that I used to work with. It definitely has had an effect. Not just on me, but on
most of my generation. And I want to give a voice to the countless people down
there that went through some of the experiences
that I went through. Some of the widows left behind, some of the orphans left behind by some of the conflicts
that went on down there. I'm trying to keep that memory and that voice alive for them.
