Mexican lead official discusses border, public safety issues
Cities across America have grappled with a spike in violent crime over the past year. South of the border, the situation is worse. The homicide rate in Mexico has skyrocketed to more than five times the homicide rate north of the border. Last year, that translated into 34,515 violent deaths. Increasingly, killers have used guns to commit those crimes. The majority of those weapons are trafficked from the U.S., many from Texas.
In late 2019, for example, a brutal firefight in the border town of Villa Union ended with 23 deaths, and led federal investigators to a Pearland-area gun shop.
Cartels have sought increasingly powerful weaponry, including .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles — capable of downing helicopters — and automatic rifles.
Roberto Velasco is the Mexican foreign ministry’s lead official for North America. Velasco, director general for North America of Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, spoke to the Chronicle on Thursday about the challenges related to public safety, firearms trafficking and other issues. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Q: Could you talk about efforts on Mexico’s side, when you’re trying to deal with the flow of firearms from the U.S.?
A: A few months ago the president announced that the army would now be leading the work of
our customs (enforcement). There are a lot of changes being made at that level. And the current administration of customs is very much focused on dealing with this problem, and they have increased very substantially the seizure of some guns and ammunition on the border. The other thing is that the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, and the Secretary of Public Safety have been working since 2019 in different operations to target the guns that are coming into the country, and they have also seized a substantial number of guns. We’ve been pushing, not only with the United States, but globally, for an agenda of gun control against trafficking, because of the really dire effects in Mexico and the fact that most of the guns that are used in crimes and by organized crime in Mexico, come from other countries, particularly from the United States of America. And a substantial fraction, particularly from Texas.
Q: Are you seeing any change in the kinds of arms that are arriving in Mexico compared to before?
A: Yes, definitely. Since the assault weapon ban was
lifted (in 2004), we’ve seen an increase in assault weapons in Mexico. And in the past few years, we’ve seen an increase in military grade weapons. For example, the Barrett, 50 caliber guns have become wildly popular with organized crime. And we’ve also encountered a lot of tactical equipment, and especially equipment to make guns faster and easier.
Q: So like the bump stock sort of attachments, or modifying semi automatics to automatic rifles?
A: Modifying equipment, bump stocks, drones, more armored equipment.
Q: What would you like to see the U.S. or Texas be doing differently? Are you seeing any shifts in the nation’s posture now that there’s a new administration? And how does that affect relations and what does that mean for Mexico?
A: We are respectful of U.S. domestic affairs, but we do believe that there needs to be greater controls when it comes to gun trafficking, particularly international trafficking, which is what affects Mexico. The lifting of the assault weapon ban has turned into an accelerator of violence from organized crime in Mexico. So that is an issue where we naturally have been engaging with the United States and saying, well, ‘This is an unintended consequence that is of great importance for us.’ And obviously, another issue where we’ve been telling the United States administration that is important for Mexico, is that we need to do greater law enforcement cooperation on gun trafficking.
We’ve been focusing in the past few years on narcotics, and money laundering. But we need to focus more on gun trafficking, because it’s also a national security threat for both countries. With the Biden administration, we do see changes. You saw these presidential actions, one of them that we view particularly favorably and with optimism is the fact that he wants to have updated data and information on gun trafficking every year, which was one of the issues that is included. And something that we saw as well was this report — I understand this is not the executive branch, but the General Accounting Office, the GAO, issued a report on trafficking — which was also very comprehensive. It included some policy recommendations for the U.S. government, that naturally, we view very favorably and included some hard data from the U.S. government regarding this problem, particularly that 70 percent of guns found in the past few years in Mexico come from the United States. And that 18.7 percent of those guns come from Texas.
Q: Is there anything else that you’d like to see changed under (President Joe) Biden, particularly as it relates to either firearms trafficking or cross border violence?
A: We’ve been saying that we need to change the model of cooperation between two countries. Firstly, as I said, we believe it needs to include the gun trafficking issue. But we also believe that what we’ve been doing in the past few years, has not produced the results that either country expected. Violence in Mexico increased ... You know, the narcotics trade is still an ongoing problem. And we also have, obviously, big financial connections between organized crime in the two countries. So we need to change the approach to be more effective to tackle these different issues. That is something that we want to engage with the new administration.
Q: Is there anything else you’d want to say?
A: Gun trafficking — I will say that it is not only an issue that is affecting Mexicans in Mexico, but you also saw what happened in El Paso (mass shooting in 2019). And they targeted the Mexican community. So this was an issue that from our perspective is related to gun control. We understand that this was a deranged individual who was promoting a hateful ideology. But he also had access to these guns that allowed him to perpetrate this crime. Fortunately now we have some good news at the local level in El Paso and naturally here in Houston. We also do a lot of work with local allies here in terms of (fighting) hate, promoting inclusion and diversity of our societies and we’re thankful to the mayor of Houston, on such issues.
Q: Did you see the news about Sheriff Ed Gonzalez (being nominated to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)? What are your thoughts about that?
A: We think it’s a positive development and look forward to engaging with him. ICE naturally is an agency which we have to talk with a lot because it affects a lot of Mexican citizens who are detained and deported to Mexico and we’re always working with ICE in order to protect the human rights of our people.