[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
U.S. EFFORTS TO COMBAT ARMS TRAFFICKING
TO MEXICO: REPORT FROM THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE (GAO)
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 19, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-19
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
______
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts RON PAUL, Texas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DIANE E. WATSON, MIKE PENCE, Indiana
California JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ADAM SMITH, JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
Washington deg.Until J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
2/9/09 deg. CONNIE MACK, Florida
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia TED POE, Texas
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
GENE GREEN, Texas
LYNN WOOLSEY, CaliforniaAs
of 3/12/09 deg.
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
BARBARA LEE, California
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
VACANT deg.From 2/10/09
through 3/12/09 deg.
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York CONNIE MACK, Florida
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
GENE GREEN, Texas CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona DAN BURTON, Indiana
ENI F. H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American ELTON GALLEGLY, California
Samoa RON PAUL, Texas
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
BARBARA LEE, California
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
RON KLEIN, Florida
Jason Steinbaum, Subcommittee Staff Director
Eric Jacobstein, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member
Francis Gibbs, Republican Professional Staff Member
Julie Schoenthaler, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESS
Mr. Jess T. Ford, Director, International Affairs and Trade Team,
United States Government Accountability Office (GAO)........... 12
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Eliot L. Engel, a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on the
Western Hemisphere: Prepared statement......................... 4
The Honorable Connie Mack, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Florida: Prepared statement........................... 8
Mr. Jess T. Ford: Prepared statement............................. 16
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 32
Hearing minutes.................................................. 33
The Honorable Dan Burton, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana: Prepared statement........................... 34
Questions for the record submitted by the Honorable Eliot L.
Engel along with responses by Mr. Jess T. Ford................. 35
Questions for the record submitted by the Honorable Michael T.
McCaul, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas,
along with responses by Mr. Jess T. Ford....................... 47
Questions for the record submitted by the Honorable Gabrielle
Giffords, a Representative in Congress From the State of
Arizona, along with responses by Mr. Jess T. Ford.............. 51
U.S. EFFORTS TO COMBAT ARMS TRAFFICKING TO MEXICO: REPORT FROM THE
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE (GAO)
----------
FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 12 o'clock p.m.
in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eliot L.
Engel (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Engel. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on the
Western Hemisphere will come to order.
I am very happy to have this hearing, albeit a day late. As
you know, it was impossible with all the votes we had yesterday
to do the hearing, so I apologize for any inconvenience, but I
am delighted that we are able to do the hearing today because
the subject is really important. And I must say, I have never
seen so much interest all over the media and people in general
and the reports, the reports of our hearing and the findings
have been all over the country in newspapers, on television, in
Mexico as well, so this has been very widely covered. And, I am
delighted that the media has picked up and run with this
because it is a very important issue.
So today's hearing will focus on the just released
Government Accountability Office report on U.S. Efforts to
Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico. I commissioned this report
with the former ranking member of this subcommittee, Dan
Burton, and several other subcommittee members last year. The
availability of firearms illegally flowing from the United
States into Mexico has armed and emboldened a dangerous
criminal element in Mexico, and it has made the brutal work of
the drug cartels even more deadly.
Data in the GAO's report shows that 93 percent of firearms
recovered in Mexico and traced in FY 2008 originate in the
United States. In FY '06 and '07 the number was 95 percent.
Now, I have been going around saying 90 percent of the guns
used by the drug cartels to commit crimes come from the United
States, and now it is even more than 90 percent. It is just
unacceptable. It is just totally unacceptable as far as I am
concerned.
It is not the first time that this subcommittee has focused
on what the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and
Explosives, ATF, has referred to as the iron river of guns
illegally flowing from the United States into Mexico. When the
Merida Initiative was announced in October 2007, the United
States and Mexico put out a joint statement in which the United
States pledged to ``intensify our efforts'' to combat the
trafficking of weapons to Mexico. As chairman of this
subcommittee I have been waiting for too long for us to live up
to this commitment, and I will not let up on the pressure until
we do so.
It has been 1\1/2\ years since the Merida Initiative was
announced. Shockingly, what did we find in the GAO's report? It
states that until just a couple of weeks ago, the United States
strategy to combat firearms trafficking to Mexico was nowhere
to be found. On June 5th, the Office of National Drug Control
Policy released its 2009 National Southwest Border
Counternarcotics Strategy, which for the first time includes a
chapter on combating illicit firearms trafficking to Mexico.
But implementation still has not begun. It is mind boggling
that for 1\1/2\ years we have had no interagency strategy to
address this major problem but instead have relied on
uncoordinated efforts by a variety of agencies. A strategy to
combat arms trafficking to Mexico should have been in place and
running on October 22nd, 2007, the day that Presidents Bush and
Calderon announced the Merida Initiative. I am glad that
President Obama has finally begun to address this.
The June 5th announcement was certainly a step in the right
direction. That was the President's announcement, and we now
anxiously await further direction on this interagency strategy
and the roles and responsibilities of various U.S. agencies. As
the GAO reports, ATF and Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
the two main agencies implementing efforts to combat firearms
trafficking to Mexico, do not effectively coordinate their
efforts.
I fully endorse the GAO's recommendation that the Attorney
General and the Secretary of Homeland Security finalize a
memorandum of understanding between ATF and ICE, and ATF we
know and ICE being Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I was
also pleased to author a provision in the House passed Foreign
Relations Authorization Act, which we just passed last week,
which will create an interagency task force on the prevention
of illicit small arms trafficking in the Western Hemisphere to
assure that our efforts to curb firearms trafficking are better
coordinated not just with regard to Mexico but with all
countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
I was not surprised to learn in the GAO report that certain
provisions of Federal firearms laws, including the Tiart
Amendment, present challenges to United States efforts to curb
firearms trafficking to Mexico. Current restrictions on
collecting and reporting information on firearms purchases not
only make the jobs of our fine police officers more difficult
than they already are, but also inhibit our ability to
effectively curb firearms trafficking to Mexico, and I have
said many, many times that this is not a Second Amendment
issue. I support Second Amendment rights. This is an issue of
illicit firearms going south of the border.
GAO reports that of the 87 percent of firearms recovered in
Mexico originating from the United States between 2004 and
2008, 19 percent were manufactured in third countries and
imported into the United States before being trafficked into
Mexico. This is why we must once again enforce the ban on
imported assault weapons that was previously enforced during
the administrations of President George H.W. Bush and Bill
Clinton.
In recent years, the George W. Bush administration quietly
abandoned enforcement of the import ban. As a result, the U.S.
civilian firearms market is flooded with imported, inexpensive,
military style assault weapons. These assault weapons, which
often come from Eastern Europe or China are being trafficked
from the United States across the border into Mexico. To get
around the ban, importers have been able to skirt restrictions
by bringing in assault weapons parts and reassembling them with
a small number of U.S. made parts.
In other words, the guns are 98 or 99 percent the same, but
they tinker with it. They make a little change in it, and
therefore they get around the ban. That is also totally
unacceptable. Enforcing the existing import ban requires no
legislative action and would be a win-win for the United States
and Mexico. On February 12th, I sent a letter to President
Obama signed by a bipartisan group of 52 of my colleagues
urging him to once again enforce the ban on imported assault
weapons. We are waiting for President Obama to act.
The data in today's report only reinforces the need to
return to enforcement of this ban. Finally, I would like to
once again call upon the Senate to ratify the Inter-American
Convention against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in
Firearms, also known as CIFTA. President Obama has publicly
called for the Senate to ratify CIFTA, and so has Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton. This treaty was signed during the
Clinton administration and must be ratified so the United
States can tell our friends in the Hemisphere that we are
serious in addressing the problems of illegal weapons
trafficking.
Before I close, I would like to personally thank the GAO
team who put together this extraordinary report over the past
year, and I want to mention their names, Jess Ford, Juan Gobel,
Addison Ricks, and Lisa Hellmer. Thank you all for your
excellent work.
With that, I would now like to call on my friend,
the deg.Ranking Member Mack, for his opening
statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Engel
follows:]Engel statement deg.
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mack. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding
this hearing, and I know it has been difficult to get to this
hearing because of all the votes yesterday, but you have a
great staff and you guys were able to make it happen today. I
also want to thank Mr. Ford for being here and his testimony.
Today is I think very important to this issue as we move
forward. And, Mr. Chairman, I hope it is appropriate, but I
would also like to welcome your son Phillip who is here with us
today. Good to see you, Phillip. Your dad thinks a lot of you.
Mr. Engel. I do, and he is also better looking than me.
Mr. Mack. Mr. Chairman, I do think it is important that as
we move forward that, it is my belief that there are many flaws
in this report, and to base future action on a report that in
my opinion is flawed doesn't make a lot of sense. What we do
know for sure is that violent crime in Mexico is on the rise,
which is a horrible thing. But this report makes conclusions
based upon opinions and assumptions.
Example, the report states that officials have said that
they saw no reason why drug cartels would go to Asia or Eastern
Europe to get weapons when it is so easy to get them from the
United States, but on page 23 you list Washington State as a
source of weapons. If the drug lords are going to Washington
State to get weapons, why not Venezuela? Venezuela is much
closer and flooded with military weapons.
Also, we hear a lot about this number, 90 or 95 percent of
the weapons are coming from the U.S. Well I would suggest that,
and even by this own report, they don't know the total number
of weapons that are coming into Mexico, and that number, the 90
or 95 percent, represents the number of guns that they can
trace. And by and large it is the U.S. weapons that are
traceable. I would ask how many weapons they have they
deg.been able to trace from Venezuela.
And I think this report contradicts itself. It makes up
concrete conclusions, but also says there is no way of knowing
the ultimate facts. For example, the report says that
``available information suggests that most firearms come from
the U.S.'' But it then says that the exact number of guns
trafficked to Mexico is unknown. I think it has got to be very
difficult when you ask the GAO to do a report, when you are
trying to put numbers around something that is almost
impossible to come up with.
The idea that 90 percent of all of the weapons in Mexico
come from the United States is one, just unbelievable, and two,
I think the report also if you read it carefully suggests that
they don't know the total number of guns that are coming into
Mexico. And the assumptions that are made are not based on fact
but based upon suggestion and one's belief. I do recognize
though that there is a problem over the border in Mexico, and I
would suggest to the committee and to people out there
watching, that if you really want to get this under control,
the way to do it is to secure our border. And both Mexico and
the United States have a shared interest in securing our
border.
On one hand Mexico doesn't want money and guns moving south
across the border into Mexico, and on the other hand we don't
want criminals and terrorists coming north across the border
into the United States. We have a shared benefit by securing
the border. And I believe it is that action that will
ultimately, if you want to get out the guns that are moving
from the United States into Mexico, the way to do it is
strengthen the border.
Mr. Chairman, again I thank you for holding this hearing
and your tenacity on making it happen because of the challenges
that we face. But ultimately, I think we have a hearing and we
are going to come to some conclusions based upon a flawed
report, and I hope that Mr. Ford has the opportunity to try to
clarify some of these issues in the report. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mack follows:]Mack
statement deg.
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Engel. Thank you very much, Mr. Mack.
Mr. Sires.
Mr. Sires. Let me first thank you for your patience. We had
a great day yesterday. It boosted up my percentage a great deal
for the amount of votes that we took. And I want to thank the
chairman for holding today's hearing. I am pleased the
subcommittee is taking a hard look at how our domestic arms
policy significantly affects our neighboring countries.
If we are to be successful in our efforts to curb drug
trafficking and limit gang violence, we must be successful in
efforts to reduce arms trafficking in Mexico and throughout the
region. Our closest allies are fighting criminals that are well
financed by our drug addiction and well armed by our free flow
of weapons. Combating arms trafficking must be a critical part
of our ongoing battle to achieve security and prosperity on our
borders and throughout our countries. I look forward to having
a good in-depth discussion, and am looking forward to share
some of the information that I read in the report, and I thank
you for being here.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Sires.
Mr. Green.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
important hearing. I would like to welcome Mr. Ford and thank
you and your colleagues for all your work in this comprehensive
report over the last year. Representing a district in Texas I
have a personal interest in this issue as the violence on our
border continues to escalate because of President Calderon's, I
might say heroic efforts to address drug trafficking and crime
and corruption in his country. I applaud President Calderon's
efforts, but alleviating illicit drug trafficking is not just
Mexico's fight.
And that is why we passed the Merida Initiative last
Congress and why the Department of Homeland Security has ramped
up its efforts on our border. One of the greatest challenges we
face in the addressing of this drug trade and the associated
violence is the arms that these traffickers are able to get
their hands on. Combating the arms trafficking into Mexico is
primarily our battle, and, Mr. Ford, your evidence highlights
this point.
According to your report, the available evidence shows that
a majority of the firearms fueling this drug violence originate
in the United States, yet you found our efforts to combat this
illegal trafficking face several challenges, particularly
related to coordination between ATF and ICE, who astonishingly
for all this time have not had a strategy to explicitly address
arms control trafficking to Mexico. Also, the ineffective use
of eTrace by Mexico, and I hope we will be able to deal with
that and highlight it in your report.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy recently
released its 2009 National Southwest Border Counternarcotics
Strategy, which for the first time includes a chapter on
combating illicit arms trafficking to Mexico. However, this
chapter is only a basic framework with an implementation plan
to follow later this summer. We can enforce export controls of
firearms from our country without limiting our country's basic
Second Amendment rights.
And, Mr. Ford, I look forward to your specific
recommendations on what this plan should include and whether
something we can as an authorizing committee do to help,
especially since the State Department's Narcotics Affairs
section has stated that it only has some flexibility to shift
Merida funding into combating arms trafficking, but this amount
would be small as the Merida Initiatives does not provide
dedicated funding to address the issue.
And again, Mr. Chairman, I think that is also something we
ought to highlight, Merida Initiative didn't provide for
funding on our side of the border to deal with it. So we might
want to consider that effort. And I look forward to your
testimony.
Mr. Engel. Thank you very much, Mr. Green.
Mr. Payne.
Mr. Payne. Well let me also thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
your persistence and for having this very important hearing.
Something must happen. This carnage that is going on in Mexico
that is coming across the border is senseless. We need to
really have some way to stop the flow of illegal weapons across
the border, but also we really need to take a look at how do we
get guns off the street in our cities, where there is a
tremendous amount of violence that is going on in most of our
major cities with many lives being lost.
You know, I am sure that when those men wrote the Second
Amendment hundreds and hundreds of years ago they certainly
didn't have the intent of what is happening now, and there is
some way that we need to seriously take a look at the
proliferation of guns and the death that it brings on innocent
people. One day, as a matter of fact, if we took violent death
out of the United States as mortality rates, we would have the
longest life expectancy in the world. However we don't, and it
is because of the tremendous number of violent deaths that
happen in the United States of America, which is very rare in
Europe where people are not in love with guns as we find so
many in this nation. And so hopefully we can really start to
get some sound thinking on this issue. I yield back the balance
of my time.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Before I call on Ms.
Giffords, I just want to state the fact that Ms. Giffords's
district borders with Mexico in Arizona, and I wanted just to
call to her attention as I had mentioned before that just 2
weeks ago the Office of National Drug Control Policy released
its 2009 National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy
which for the first time includes a chapter on combating
illicit firearms trafficking to Mexico, so I have had many
discussions about this with Ms. Giffords and it is an issue of
much concern to her. And in the fall I am hoping to go to her
district and perhaps do a field hearing with this subcommittee
to talk about this issue and other issues, immigration or
whatever, involving the border between Mexico and of course
Arizona.
So I call on Ms. Giffords for her remarks.
Ms. Giffords. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your
leadership on this subcommittee. We look forward to having you
and other members of the committee that are interested in
coming down really to the front lines of what is happening in
terms of violence and the drug smuggling across the United
States-Mexico border.
I want to welcome Mr. Ford. Good afternoon, it is great to
have you here today. I was recently appointed the vice chair of
the United States-Mexico interparliamentary workgroup, where
just a couple weeks ago we Mexicans and Americans came
together, Members of the House and the Senate on both sides of
the border, to talk about the variety of issues that we have at
hand, and it is an important meeting but particularly in light
of what is happening with illegal immigration and drug
smuggling and the violence as well.
Last February, six colleagues and I requested the GAO
report to look at the flow of firearms across the border, and
in contradiction to some comments that were made earlier, I am
very proud of the work that the GAO does. The GAO as well we
asked to do a report looking at the checkpoint issue along the
United States-Mexico border. And to see the dedication of
members of the GAO that come out, that get to know the
districts in the area sometimes better than the members
frankly. It was incredibly impressive. So if you would please
complement and pass on the words to your staff, it is a
tremendous resource that we have the GAO available to us, and I
think your work is excellent.
I think this hearing is timely, looking at drug violence
since 2006 that has claimed over 10,000 lives. Just last week
the Mexican Army captured 25 gunmen in the state of Chihuahua,
seized 29 automatic rifles. That is the same day that
authorities in the western state of Michoacan reported that
three Federal agents had been killed in two attacks along the
highway, and investigators there recovered more than 500 shell
casings at the two crime scenes.
So this report allows us to highlight the need for
additional resources, again on both sides of the border. We are
not going to solve this problem on our side and they are not
going to solve it on their side unless we work cooperatively
together. Again, Mr. Chairman, I do represent the most heavily
trafficked district in terms of illegal immigrants coming into
the United States, that is the Tuscon sector of the Border
Patrol. And we see more violence and more guns and more drugs
flowing both ways, and it is a problem that we have to address.
So again thank you for your leadership on this, and we are
looking forward to hearing from your testimony.
Mr. Engel. Thank you very much, Ms. Giffords.
Before I call on our distinguished witness, I want to
mention something and want to especially compliment Mexican
President Calderon. In the past 6 months I have met with him
five times. Five times in four different countries actually,
more so than I have met with any other leader in the
Hemisphere. And I must say that I admire President Calderon's
courage and intelligence and his great decision to not just sit
quietly and allow the drug lords and the drug cartels to
continue to wreak havoc in his country.
He has moved forcefully against them, which is probably a
contribution to the reason why they are now being defiant and
acting out and doing so much more destruction damage to try to
push him around and push back and try to show him who is boss.
Well, we have a stake in the Mexican Government and the Mexican
President declaring that they are the ones who run things in
Mexico, not the cartels who are trying to destroy so many lives
just for money that they can line their pockets with.
So I just want to say that I and other members of this
subcommittee admire the work that President Calderon has done
in this regard, and I think that the bilateral relationship
between the United States and Mexico is such an important
relationship that anything that we do needs to be coordinated
with Mexico with regard of course to border policy and
everything else that we have talked about, immigration, drug
trafficking, gun trafficking, all the problems.
We are only going to be successful if we work on this
together. But I did want to say again that I am delighted to
have had five bilateral meetings with him, private meetings
with subcommittee members, with some other Members who are not
on the subcommittee, and privately, and I admire his tenacity
and his courage. I want to say that.
So now I am pleased to introduce our distinguished witness
today, Jess Ford. Jess is a Director for Internal Affairs and
Trade at the Government Accounting Office, known affectionately
as the GAO, where he has worked since 1973. That is even longer
than I have been here. Mr. Ford, who has testified before
Congress over 40 times, is no stranger to this subcommittee. I
was pleased to welcome you here in October 2007 for a hearing I
chaired just as the Merida Initiative was announced. And it is
a pleasure to welcome you back to the subcommittee once again.
In fact you have been with GAO so long as Mr. Ford, you were
even there when we had President Ford. So it is nice to have
someone with a lot of experience and I look forward to
listening to your testimony today. Thank you, Mr. Ford.
STATEMENT OF MR. JESS T. FORD, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
AND TRADE TEAM, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
(GAO)
Mr. Ford. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of
the subcommittee. I appreciate those kind words.
I am pleased to be here today to discuss our recent report
related to illicit arms trafficking into Mexico. In recent
years violence along the Mexico border has escalated
dramatically as the administration of President Felipe Calderon
has sought to combat the growing power of Mexican drug
trafficking organizations and to curb their ability to operate
with impunity in areas of Mexico. Mexican officials have come
to regard illicit firearms as the number one crime problem
facing the country.
According to the Department of Justice 2009 National Drug
Threat Assessment, Mexican drug trafficking organizations
represent the greatest organized crime threat in the United
States, controlling drug distribution in many U.S. cities. In
particular, law enforcement reporting indicates Mexican drug
trafficking organizations maintain drug distribution networks
and drug supply distributions in over 230 U.S. cities.
In March 2009, the Department of Homeland Security
announced that it planned to increase resources on the United
States-Mexican border including more personnel and greater use
of available technologies. And as the chairman mentioned, just
2 weeks ago the ONDCP released its new Southwest Border
Counternarcotics Strategy, which for the first time contains a
chapter on arms.
Today I am going to discuss the data that is available on
the types, sources, and users of arms, the key challenges that
confront the U.S. Government in its efforts to combat illicit
sales of firearms in the United States and to stem the flow of
these arms across the southwest border into Mexico, the
challenges facing United States agencies collaborating with the
Mexican authorities, and the U.S. Government's strategy for
addressing this issue.
Available evidence indicates that a large proportion of
firearms fueling the Mexican drug violence originated in the
United States, including a growing number of increasingly
lethal weapons. While it is impossible to know how many
firearms are illegally trafficked into Mexico in any given
year, over 20,000, or around 87 percent of the firearms seized
and traced over the past 5 years have originated in the United
States according to ATF.
The data we are using is ATF data, we have spent a lot of
time working with them, and I can get into that in the Q & A
about what we know about this issue. We believe this is the
best data that is currently available that indicates what the
nature of the problem is. In the last 3 years, over 90 percent
of the guns that were traced from Mexico came from the United
States according to ATF. The chart that I have got to my left
is a summarization actually of the 5 years of information that
came from ATF, including the actual number of guns that were
traced from the United States, and if you totaled that number
up, it is over 20,000 guns over the last 5 years.
Of that amount, ATF data shows that approximately 68
percent of the firearms were manufactured in the United States,
and 19 percent were manufactured in third countries. The
remaining amounts ATF was not able to identify for us exactly
where the guns were manufactured. According to United States
and Mexican Government officials, these firearms have been
increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years. For
example, many of these firearms are high caliber, high powered
weapons such as AK-47s and AR-15 type semiautomatic rifles.
According to ATF trace data, many of these firearms came
from gun shops and gun shows in the southwest Border States
such as Texas, California, and Arizona. United States and
Mexican Government and law enforcement officials
states deg. that most guns trafficked in Mexico are
intended to support the operations of Mexican drug trafficking
organizations which are responsible for most of the trafficking
of arms into Mexico.
The U.S. Government faces several significant challenges in
its efforts to combat the illicit sale of firearms and to stem
the flow of arms across the border. First, according to ATF
officials, certain provisions of some Federal firearm laws
present challenges in their efforts to investigate firearms
cases. The three areas that they identified for us include the
restrictions on collecting and reporting information on
firearms purchases, the lack of required background checks for
private firearms sales, and limitations on reporting
requirements on multiple gun sales.
Another major challenge that we found is that ATF and ICE,
the two primary agencies responsible for implementing efforts
to address the smuggling of arms and identifying the nature of
the problem, are not consistently coordinating their efforts
effectively in part because the agencies lack clear roles and
responsibilities and have been operating under an outdated
interagency agreement. This has resulted in some instances of
duplicate initiatives and confusion in operations.
Additionally, we found agencies lack systematic analysis
and reporting on data related to arms trafficking, and that
they are also unable to provide complete information to us on
the results of their efforts to stop guns from being smuggled
into Mexico. We believe this type of information could be
useful to better understand the nature of the problem and to
help plan ways to address it and to make more progress in
stopping the illicit smuggling of arms into Mexico. United
States law enforcement agencies and the Department of State
have provided some assistance to Mexican counterparts in
combating arms trafficking, but these efforts face several key
challenges.
United States law enforcement agencies have built working
relationships with Mexican Federal, state, and local law
enforcement, as well as the Mexican military, which has given
the United States the opportunity to provide the Mexican
Government counterparts with technical and operational
assistance to address the firearms problem. For example,
although the Merida Initiative provides general law enforcement
and counternarcotics assistance to Mexico, it does not provide
dedicated funding to address the issue of arms trafficking.
A number of officials told us that would be helpful to
combat arms trafficking such as establishing multi-agency arms
trafficking taskforce to help address this problem.
Furthermore, United States assistance has been limited in
helping the Mexican Government to expand its capabilities to
provide better trace information to the United States
Government to better understand the overall nature of gun
trafficking and gun problems in the country.
According to Mexican and United States Government
officials, extensive corruption in Federal, state, and local
levels is another problem that impedes United States efforts to
develop effective and dependable partnerships with the Mexican
Government. Mexican Government officials indicated that
anticorruption measures such as increased use of polygraph and
psychological testing, background checks, and salary increases
are efforts underway to try to address this problem.
Mr. Chairman, I am not going to mention the new strategy
other than to acknowledge the fact it is the first time that
our Government has put together an articulated strategy to deal
with the gun issue. The strategy is new, it just came out 2
weeks ago. There are some key issues related to the strategy
that have not yet been fully announced by the administration.
The key issues in our mind have to do with an implementation
plan that will go along with the strategy.
We think it is critical that this plan have a clear sense
of who is going to be responsible for carrying out the key
parts of the strategy and it will have some performance
indicators so we will know somewhere down the road how
effectively the strategy is working. And we have a
recommendation in our report that ONDCP provide that type of
information.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, we made a series of recommendations
to the Attorney General's Office and Homeland Security covering
such issues as addressing the issue of how some of the legal
constraints might be addressed, and if they feel necessary to
approach the Congress with whatever remedies they believe need
to be taken that they finalize this memorandum of understanding
that has been under negotiation for several months to better
improve their working relationship between ATF and ICE, that
they improve their data gathering techniques related to the
nature of the problem and the reporting of results on gun
smuggling, that they expedite their working relationship with
the Mexican Government to enhance eTrace capability so that we
have a better understanding of the nature of gun trafficking in
Mexico, and as I mentioned that ONDCP incorporate the
implementation plans and performance measures so that Congress
will have a better understanding of whether we are having
success in this area.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement. I would
be happy to answer any of your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ford follows:]Jess
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Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Ford. Let me say that in about 10
minutes I think we are going to have a series of votes, so I
would like to see if we could perhaps conclude within the next
10 or 15 or 20 minutes perhaps.
Let me just ask you this--well, I guess I was a little off
with the timing of the votes. Let me just ask you this. On June
4th, President Obama said that there was going to be a new
strategy, ostensibly to plug the holes with some of the things
that we found wanting in the report. Help me to understand what
happens. You have issued a report, there are a lot of good
things in that report, there are things in that report that I
think many of us, probably on both sides of the isle, would
want implemented. When the administration starts to implement
it, what is the mechanism for incorporating some of the
recommendations in your report?
I know the President doesn't have to use your
recommendations, but I would hope since it was a year's work
and it was well thought out and well done that the
administration would look to this report. So help me to
understand how that dynamic works. Because otherwise the
administration is coming up with a whole way of doing things
which may to some degree coincide with the report but perhaps
not. I would hope that they would read the report and would
incorporate a lot of what the report says into their
recommendations for change.
Mr. Ford. There are a couple of things. First of all, we
did get official comments from Department of Homeland Security
and State Department, and both of those agencies agreed with
the recommendations that we had for them. So we hope that they
will actually implement them. They said they would. They are
required within 60 days of the issuance of a report to actually
send a letter to Congress indicating what action they are going
to take. With regard to the Department of Justice and the
ONDCP, they did not provide official comments to our draft.
So at this point we do not know whether they agree with our
recommendations and whether or not they will act on them. I can
tell you that we have had several discussions with officials at
ONDCP who have indicated to us that they do intend in fact to
put out an implementation plan directly related to this
strategy and that that plan will contain accountability and
performance measures that will help Congress understand whether
or not we are having any success. They haven't told us that
officially, but unofficially they have told us that, so I have
confidence that some action will be taken in that area. I
cannot comment on the Department of Justice. They did not
provide us with any information about whether they are going to
agree to our recommendations or not.
Mr. Engel. Well I am going to write a letter to the
President and urge him to have his administration take into
account this report when they are formulating what they are
going to do with this. And their January 4th statement again
was a good one, but, you know, the proof is in the pudding. I
hope they will listen to what you have to say. I am going to
leave it just from my question, I am going to give everybody
else a chance to ask a question if they want because we
obviously have some time constraints right now.
So I will call on Mr. Mack.
Mr. Mack. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And as I mentioned in my opening statement, I am having a
little bit of difficulty having any real confidence in the
report. It is not to say that I don't think some of the
recommendations that you come up with might be good ones, but I
don't know that the report itself is something that we should
put a lot of value in. Most of the things you have talked
about, most of the numbers you have talked about have been
based upon the number of guns that you were able to trace, and
we know that a majority of guns that you are able to trace are
the ones that come from the U.S. But that leaves out a majority
of the guns that are being seized.
So I would ask how many guns were you able to trace to Cuba
or Venezuela or Bolivia or Ecuador, or from other continents?
That would be a question that I would have for you. Also, you
know, just I think 2 days ago we were at another hearing
together where you had said that radio or TV Marti, that less
than 1 percent of Cubans see it. And I suggested then that how
would you even contemplate that a Cuban would answer the phone
and say, yes I watch TV Marti when they are in Cuba living
under a brutal dictatorship?
So these two things, this report and that report, I am
having a hard time having any kind of real confidence in the
report itself. So if you could comment on how many of the
weapons do we know come from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador,
and if you agree that if we had a strong border between United
States and Mexico, if that would stop any of the guns that are
moving south, if that would stop it as well.
Mr. Ford. Okay, well let me maybe respond first to the
issue of the data that you indicate you believe the way we have
portrayed that information is flawed. I don't agree with that
conclusion. What we have got is a summary of information that
came from ATF. It is ATF data, it is not GAO data. The ATF data
is based on guns that were identified and traced from Mexico.
As we clearly state in our report, that represents
approximately a quarter of the guns that the Mexican Government
reported that they seized in 2008. So we clearly identify that
in the report. Secondly, with regard to, the data is the data.
It is 20,000 guns----
Mr. Mack. Let me just say this. So it would be, so you
would also say that to say that 90 percent or 95 percent of the
guns in Mexico are coming from the United States is false, that
is not an accurate statement?
Mr. Ford. That is correct, and we don't say that.
Mr. Mack. Right, but other people are saying that. So I
think it is important that we----
Mr. Ford. Well, our report does not say that. Our report
clearly states the facts. The facts are, it is 90 percent of
the guns that were traced, that the Mexican Government and ATF
were able to send back here to be traced by ATF. It does not
represent--that 75 percent of the guns, that we don't know
where they came from because they were never submitted for
trace. That is clearly stated in our report. So if someone is
misreporting that, you know, that is not my problem. But our
report is based on the facts.
The second thing that I think is more important to this,
and the thing that I think you all should be concerned about
is, regardless of whether we know the 100 percent of all of the
guns that have been seized in Mexico where they came from, I
think we should be concerned by the fact that 20,000 of those
guns we know for sure came from here. And I think that in terms
of us coming through with a policy and a program to address
this problem at the border, to address your second question,
yes I do think we need to tighten up on the border.
When we started this project, this was not a priority, to
stop southbound trafficking of arms. Our agencies were focused
on northbound activities. And most of the agencies that we
dealt with during the course of this job were just not focused
on the whole issue of arms. So I think yeah, we need to tighten
up on the border, I think it is an important thing. I think the
new strategy that just came out is an effort to try to do that.
But the data that we use in our report we believe is sound, and
we do believe that further effort to actually expand tracing in
Mexico will shed further light on this issue if in fact we can
get the Mexican Government to send more traces here.
Mr. Engel. The gentleman's time is expired. I know we are
running out of time. I want to give my colleagues a chance to
quickly ask. Maybe we will do three questions in a row and have
you respond to it. I know Ms. Giffords in particular since it
borders her district is anxious.
So why don't we start with Mr. Green, you can do a quick
question, then we will do three questions, and then we will
conclude.
Mr. Green. I would like to ask questions about two issues.
One, I know you describe that the United States attorneys,
Executive Office of United States Attorneys, they didn't have
data on cases where they have made on arms smuggling. Do you
believe it would be helpful to establish guidelines for
identifying tracking arms trafficking cases, any additional
legislation needed to permit such tracking or can it proceed
under current law? If so, which agencies should go out and do
these guidelines?
The other one you mentioned and I mentioned in my opening
statement is about the Merida Initiative provided no funding
specifically designated to combat arms trafficking. And in your
opinion what level of resources would be necessary and what
areas would we need to be able to do our job on our side of the
border to control the illegal export of firearms?
Mr. Engel. Let me see if Mr. Ford can do that in under 1
minute if you could. I know it is difficult and I apologize.
Mr. Ford. Okay, well let me see if I understood your
question correctly. The first issue is whether or not there is
more that could be done to collect information on the results
of prosecutions?
Mr. Green. Well, the number of cases that are to be made
on, you know, export firearms, and also the success of them.
From what your report shows, we don't even know how many cases
we are making.
Mr. Ford. That is correct. One of the difficulties we had
in the course of this job, every agency we asked, well what
information do you have that would show number of prosecutions,
seizures, smuggling? We were not able to find any good data
from any of the agencies, including the U.S. Attorney's Office
on the number of cases they prosecuted that were related to
arms trafficking to Mexico, they couldn't give us any real good
data on that.
Mr. Green. I know personally they are making some cases
now, and very high profile as in the Houston area and in Texas,
so I am hoping we will see that because it has been a violation
of the law to export firearms without a permit for many years,
and we just haven't enforced the law. And the other one is,
should we, Mr. Chairman, and what agencies should we do to try
and make an addition to the Merida Initiative not only helping
Mexico but also to fund our side of the border? I know the
President has transferred ATF agents there, 35 the last number
I heard, but even more resources to again to enforce our
current law on the prohibition of exporting.
Mr. Ford. Well, first of all, the President has in fact
beginning in March allocated, I believe, I haven't confirmed
this, approximately $350 million of reallocation of resources
to address the issue of southbound trafficking, put more people
on the border to do more investigations, more screening of cars
as they go south. We haven't really examined that in detail,
but there is already an effort to reallocate resources on that
now.
Mr. Engel. Let me call on Ms. Giffords.
Ms. Giffords. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ford, you mentioned that the data is the data, but one
of the issues that the Mexicans have been bringing up for about
11 years is the fact that when they go to putting in the data
in eTrace it is only in English. And I wanted to talk about why
is it that we can't, with all of the technology that we have
out there, convert this over into Spanish language?
Mr. Ford. Okay, well I am glad you mentioned that. That is
actually one of the State Department's programs to try to
expedite the use of Spanish eTrace. I don't know the current
status of where that is. We also don't know why it has taken
them this long to convert that process into Spanish. We don't
think it should be that difficult to do that. There are some
logistical issues because one of the issues within Mexico is
they want to be able to report information throughout the
entire country.
Right now they have very limited capability in terms of
people that can know how to use the eTrace system itself, they
have to be trained. And secondly, they haven't deployed the
system throughout the entire country. So that may be one of the
constraining factors. But we believe, and in one of our
recommendations to State Department was they need to expedite
this whole process.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Payne, for the last question.
Mr. Payne. Thank you. Do you know whether the Mexican
authorities can get more guns up to be traced so that we can
really take it out to the next level? I kind of agree, you
know, the facts are the facts. You know, of what ATF got back,
90 percent came from the U.S. That is a fact. I would be
interested in knowing if there is an effort to try to get more
traced?
Mr. Ford. There is a clear effort to try to expand the use
of eTrace so that we have a better understanding of the overall
nature of the problem. It is my understanding according to what
ATF has told us most recently that they are getting more
numbers of requests to trace guns that have been seized in
criminal activity. So the volume is increasing, but I do not
know at this point whether or not they have been able to expand
beyond the 25 percent that was mentioned in our report for this
year. We haven't got the data for 2009 yet, so we don't know
whether it has expanded to 35 percent or whatever.
Mr. Payne. And there is no way to tell where the guns were
purchased from? Are there any kind of markings on guns that you
could trace it back to the gun store that sold them?
Mr. Ford. Well, it is two different issues there. In terms
of being able to identify a potential manufacturer, some
weapons, my understanding is you can do that. However, the
importance of the tracing is to identify where the gun was
sold.
Mr. Payne. That is what I mean, yeah.
Mr. Ford. The tracing is really used as part of the
criminal investigation that ATF may undertake. So they want to
know which shop the gun was sold at and then try to prosecute
or, you know, investigate that issue.
Mr. Payne. Exactly.
Mr. Engel. I think we are going to have to have that as the
last word, but let me just encourage members of the
subcommittee to submit any further questions to Mr. Ford in
writing, and I am sure he will be able to answer them.
And I just want to call on Mr. Mack for a motion.
Mr. Mack. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that
members have five legislative days to submit statements and
questions for the record.
Mr. Engel. Without objection, so moved.
Mr. Ford, thank you for your excellent testimony. We really
appreciate it, and we will be exploring all the things in the
report further.
The subcommittee is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:52 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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