The guns cartels are using in Mexico have been illicitly trafficked from the US, John Sandweg, former ICE Director, tells Al Arabiya News.
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00:00Historically, most of the U.S.'s focus has been on illegal traffic going north into the
00:04United States.
00:05And people might be surprised, we typically and historically have done very little enforcement
00:11on southbound traffic.
00:12So people going into Mexico rarely encounter U.S. officials who screen them or document
00:19their departure or search for the illicit flow of guns.
00:21Typically, Tom, what happens here are guns go south and cash goes south, drugs and people
00:27go north.
00:28So I think Mexico, this has long been a frustration for them.
00:35A lot of the guns that cartels utilize and a lot of the guns in Mexico are illicitly
00:38trafficked from the United States.
00:40The challenge for the U.S., of course, has been with the chaos we saw at the border over
00:45the last eight years, we just had huge numbers of people crossing.
00:49It really pulls the resources from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that would
00:53be in charge of outbound enforcement from deploying those troops that we needed to put
00:57those Border Patrol agents working in the interior and those CBP officers handling
01:02the influx of people coming across the border.
01:05So I think that was a significant concession to the extent that the U.S. steps up on that
01:09and one that frankly really will help kind of dismantle those cartels, as I was saying,
01:13in terms of depriving them of some of the cash that they're trying to repatriate and
01:17depriving them of the firearms that they smuggle from the United States.