By Alain Stephens, March 7, 2024
The Trace
United States border agents are cracking down on gun trafficking across the southern border as part of a broader bilateral effort against Mexican drug cartels.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported intercepting 1,171 guns before they crossed into Mexico in 2023. That is nearly seven times as many as in 2019, when CBP intercepted 173 guns.
While experts say the increase is promising, the number of weapons being captured by CBP still represents only a sliver of the hundreds of thousands of guns that researchers estimate are trafficked from the United States to Mexico every year.
