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Caribbean-Latin America

Inside the Supply Line Delivering American Guns to Mexican Cartels

2026-04-01

It’s the New York Times, so the details may even be true.

[NYT] A surge of weapons is flowing from the U.S. to Mexico. These firearms — sourced from gun shops, shows, websites and apps — are funneled across the border to fuel the country’s most violent crimes.

The 17-year-old sat in a hotel room, running a high-stakes logistics hub from his smartphone. He scrolled through listings of weapons for sale on WhatsApp and fielded requests like a call-center operator, dispatching orders in real time: Kalashnikovs, AR-15-style rifles and lots of ammunition.

The pace of business has become relentless, said the arms smuggler, the Arizona-born son of a local cartel cell leader. Though still in high school here in Phoenix, he is now handling as many as 200 firearms orders a week, roughly double what he shipped to Mexico before President Trump returned to the White House and pressed for a crackdown on the cartels.

Moving the weapons into Mexico is easy, he said, despite increased surveillance and enforcement on both sides of the border. “No one stops you unless you run a red light,” he said.

As the Trump administration pushes the Mexican government to do more against drug cartels, an unintended beneficiary has emerged from the U.S. pressure campaign: the weapons smugglers who supply guns to the Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal powerhouse behind much of the fentanyl flooding American streets.

Mexican and U.S. authorities have poured billions of dollars into stemming the flow of drugs, particularly fentanyl going north. Yet gun traffickers have quietly moved what they say is an unprecedented amount of weapons south, arming the very criminal group the U.S.-Mexico effort was meant to weaken.

Over the past year and a half, the demand for weapons has exploded as the Sinaloa Cartel wages a three-front war: confronting an intensified offensive by the Mexican government, battling rival factions within its own ranks and stocking up for the prospect of U.S. military intervention.

I spent weeks interviewing seven cartel operatives directly involved in buying and delivering firearms from the United States. They are all tied to the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s most powerful criminal groups. Two of the dealers are based in Arizona and the five others operate in Sinaloa state, the cartel’s stronghold.

The smugglers spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from law enforcement and their bosses. Their accounts provide chilling details of how weapons sold in American gun shops and at gun shows — and increasingly through websites and phone apps that operate like open marketplaces — are funneled to Mexican cartel members and used in some of the country’s most violent crimes.

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