Dan Gooding and Billal Rahman
Newsweek, August 7, 2024
Immigration into the United States is being partly driven by gun violence — which itself is fueled by firearms bought in the U.S. and illegally transported back to Mexico by organized crime networks.
Over 200,000 firearms found in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico between 2015 and 2022 were linked back to the U.S., recent data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) shows.
“So the criminal organizations that are running drugs into the United States are also controlling the movement of migrants and making it impossible for many families to stay in their communities. [They] are getting their guns from U.S. retail markets,” John Lindsay-Poland from the organization Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico told Newsweek.
