My name's Ed Calderon.
I'm a former Baja police agent.
I currently work as a security consultant
in the United States.
This is how crime works.
Gun smuggling has armed the people
that killed a lot of the people that I used to work with.
A lot of these groups
are actually stockpiling these firearms
for long periods of time.
It's hard for anybody to keep track of numbers
and what gets found and what doesn't get found
in a country where realistically nobody's keeping count.
I think the flow is this.
Drugs make their way north,
and firearms and money make their way south.
70% of all firearms come from the north,
from the United States.
Operación Hormiga, they call it Operation Ant.
Basically, individuals carrying these small pistols
across the border is a very common thing.
So, how many times can they cross the border?
Well, if they're Americans, there's no limit
to how many times they can cross that border.
It's a pretty easy process to grabbing an AK-47,
taking it apart into its basic components,
putting it in a backpack, and just walking
across some of the ports of entry.
Another one is just basically having
some of these firearms duct-taped
and/or shrink-wrapped onto your person.
So, let's imagine I have five mules.
Each of them is capable of carrying
around probably two guns on their legs,
duct-taped to their legs,
maybe two more higher up on their thighs,
and maybe two on their chest.
Just multiply that by the amount of people
you have doing that on a daily basis,
filling their pockets with ammunition,
filling Corn Flakes boxes with ammunition as well.
Tijuana is basically Silicon Valley
when it comes to finding ways of smuggling things
in through one of the most-watched borders
on the planet, basically.
There's body shops.
There's places that install radios.
There's a bunch of people with a lot of experience
in modifying vehicles down there.
These businesses have been known to basically construct
some of these concealment compartments in vehicles.
Many occasions, we would encounter or find firearms
of different kinds in different vehicle hides
in and around some of the places where we operated.
Things like pushing the volume knob on the radio
and then pulling the brake on the car
will release a latch on the passenger-side seat
revealing a concealed firearm.
American vehicles are the preferred kind.
You'll see recreational vehicles
utilizing festive days where,
you know, spring break,
where you'll see a surge of traffic
going from the north to the south.
A lot of the smuggling operations that have utilized
concealment related to regular commercial shipments
from the United States into Mexico
of agricultural equipment, electrical appliances.
A lot of these companies are basically utilized as fronts.
And/or without knowledge of these companies,
they get loaded up with extra stuff
on their way towards the border
as they pick up a load somewhere in the United States
and try and introduce it into Mexico.
Another aspect of it is tunnels, drug tunnels.
Again, firearms do get moved through those drug tunnels
that have been operating and are still operating.
Some of the most interesting ones that we managed to see
was French-style trebuchets,
which are basically giant catapults
flinging things across the border at some ungodly speeds.
Drone technology. The first crashed cartel drone
that I directly saw was a large quad drone
that crashed right on the border
where the Tijuana River treatment plant is.
We saw remote-control vehicles.
Small ones, toy ones, basically,
loaded up with firearms, munitions, and money
being driven across the border by radio control.
This is not my opinion,
but the Border Patrol is one of the most
corrupted federal institutions in the United States.
There's been many cases and convictions against them.
And it's, these gun runners have people everywhere
and have and own people in some of these ports of entry
and pay corrupted officials across the border.
It is interesting that you do not get searched
at all at times crossing into Mexico,
but if you cross into San Diego,
your vehicle gets scanned, you have to step out of the car,
sometimes you have to take off your backpack
and put it into an X-ray machine so it gets X-rayed.
Density scanners might be utilized to try and detect
some of the firearms going across the border,
but those X-rays are used sporadically.
Every now and then you'll get one get used,
and it's rare that they find something.
There's explosive-detection dogs
that are out there that are trained to detect explosives.
Munitions, for example.
But, again, you have to realize,
to not only create a dog, canine program
that is able to detect some of these things,
but to maintain them, is not an easy thing.
In my experience, most of the arrests
that we made were pitazos.
A pitazo is a Mexican slang word
for "somebody told on them."
Usually it's a personal thing,
or usually it's somebody just eliminating competition.
Those vehicle hides, a lot of these gun runners
that have been caught in the past
were random acts of pure luck
or somebody trying to cut the competition out.
20-year-olds, 18-year-olds that have a clean record
get hired to buy some of these guns in some of these places.
And then they get gathered by the gun runners.
Somebody that has a vehicle, who's a retiree American
that crosses the border regularly somehow,
maybe goes camping in Baja and stuff like that,
is a perfect candidate to be a mule for firearms.
And you'll load a bunch of cars
with people that are not who you typically expect
to stop at the border.
So they basically utilize
people camouflage.
What do people expect to see
on the border as far as a drug smuggler?
So they're going to shy away from that.
Women get utilized a lot, a lot, to move things around.
Older women, because of the cultural stigma
of Mexican police agents
as far trying to search, physically search a female,
much less a female that is older in age.
Social media is a very big part of it.
Not only the advertisement of some of these things
being sold in some places,
but also recruitment of small-purchase buyers
on the US side.
Cartels will troll places like TikTok,
will have social-media accounts
related to one of their members
or showcasing some of their activities online,
and you'll see wannabes or people sending DMs
and stuff like that on the US side.
Kids that want to be a part of the lifestyle.
It's easy money for a kid, you know?
The economy, the lack of opportunities
for a lot of the young people.
Even with educations down there, it's hard to find a job.
I was approached several times when I was going
through my process of turning into a police officer,
and it only takes you doing something
for a criminal organization
like any of these cartels that operate on that border,
it only takes once for them to know your name,
to know how to contact you,
to know that you are able to provide a service. Once.
And the first time, it's voluntary.
The second time, they're going to tell you to do something.
The person buying that gun and then handing it
to somebody that's going to then traffic it down south,
he got probably $200.
So that's the first payment, you know?
And then that gun is now going
to be probably doubled down south,
or maybe 80% more
of the value's going to be added on to it.
So you have something that might be worth $800,
and now it's worth $1,500 down there
in the hands of somebody that wants that specific gun.
The further south you go, the more expensive the firearm.
That's kind of the rules about it.
The closer you are to the border, the cheaper it is.
The gun runner might have connections,
and he might have paid somebody off.
Usually if it's a large shipment,
he'll have security with him as soon as he crosses.
By this, I mean people that are watching the load
and move with him.
You know, some of these people might drive it
to a body shop or they might drive it
to one of these beach resorts
where you can park your camper there,
and that is when the deal happens.
That could be where some money gets exchanged.
It could have gotten exchanged on the northern side,
but that's when the guns become property
of whoever's going to get them.
I've seen some of the gun runners
put guns into places like Tecate,
which is to the east in the desert,
and basically in traditional places where they
can avoid military checkpoints if they can.
Or sometimes they don't even care
because they actually paid off some of the military as well.
It is not an easy process
to procure a legal firearm in Mexico.
Mexico has a single blanket firearms law.
There's a single firearms store in Mexico.
If anybody wants a firearm legally in Mexico,
you have to be able to pay for a bunch of documentations,
and you usually end up with a overpriced pistol
and not a lot of ways to buy bullets for that pistol
unless you belong to a shooting club.
And if you belong to a shooting club in Mexico,
that's a very expensive thing.
So, in essence, legal possession of firearms
is something that upper-middle-class people can afford.
So people are desperate, and if they want security,
usually in Mexico as a civilian,
you'll go into the black market.
Most of the gun-friendly places on the border
are usually where these things are purchased.
Texas, Arizona, sometimes even further north
where person-to-person sales and private sales
are more permitted, where gun shows are pretty prevalent.
Somebody will walk into a gun store
and buy and purchase a couple of firearms.
And some of these things get moved from a permissive,
or a place where firearm laws are pretty,
you know, pretty open
to places like California. And the reason you see that
is because they're actually being utilized
to pay drug loads sometimes.
You also have a lot of people ordering
some of these firearm parts through the mail now,
which is a new method of smuggling as well.
People will buy some of these things in the United States
and then mail them down to Mexico under false labels
and declarations as far as what's inside of those boxes,
for accessories, for firearms, and being gathered
in a private home, packaged and labeled falsely,
and then sent south through packaging services.
There's been many cases of things being taken off
military bases in California, for example.
Grenades that are clearly coming
from military installations in the United States
and/or are taken from military bases by corrupted soldiers.
Every now and then you'll see
bigger-caliber equipment down there.
The truth is those account for about 70%
of illegal firearms found in Mexico
in the hands of cartels and murder scenes
and in the heads of dead sicarios.
The truth is that it's probably more than that.
They assassinate political candidates.
They use explosives, terror tactics,
psychological tactics, they capture, imprison people.
Right now currently there's the Sinaloa Cartel
that's historically been dominating the border
and a big part of Mexico,
but now there's the New Generation Cartel,
which is a very new ultraviolent, militarized,
almost guerilla force that has taken over.
And with groups like these,
they have very specific firearms that they want to buy.
So they're not only looking
for a gold-plated AK-47 anymore,
they're actually looking for night-vision equipment
to install on their firearms.
They're looking for suppressors
to put on a .50-caliber precision rifle that they procure.
You'll see these commercial-gun manufacturers
making a very cool, aesthetically cartel-like pistol.
It's obvious if you have a gun company
creating a gold gun for a civilian market
that they're trying to tap into
a fascination and/or a culture
that is currently going to be and foster a narco culture.
A narco cultura, or narco culture,
is something that's been going on in Mexico for decades.
The fascination or the treatment
of some of these criminal organizations
as almost a Robin Hood-type character,
where they're robbing from the rich
and stealing from the poor.
I can't tell you that
making guns impossible to get
or restricted or illegal,
something like you would see in Australia,
would be a solution to anything,
because guns are already out there.
There's a lot of people
that want to blame the United States for everything.
Like, I think they clearly have responsibility
when it comes to some of the firearms crossing that border.
You have the United States
basically outsourcing its counter-drug policy
and counter-cartel policy to Mexico through money.
The United States, I would say,
should do a better job of keeping track
of what that money's being used for in Mexico.
Some of the arrests that have been made recently
by American law enforcement
sharing some of their information with Mexico,
like sights, lasers, things of this nature,
for accessories for firearms, basically,
this is what every now and then gets caught.
But, again, it's a drop in the bucket
with what actually gets through.
When we saw some of this activity, and who do we tell?
Do we tell the same law-enforcement agencies
that didn't let us know
about all those guns walking across that border
that ended up killing a bunch of my friends? You know?
It was my experience to actually find some of these
"Fast and the Furious" guns during my time active,
in the form of some FN Five-seven pistols that were used
on some of my friends that I used to work with.
This was an ATF operation.
The ATF would approach places of gun sales
and keep an eye out for certain types
of purchases of firearms.
The ATF wanted to let these guns walk
so they can track them down to Mexico
to see if they can somehow make a case for something bigger.
But realistically, all they did was let
almost 2,000 guns walk across the border.
And most Mexicans saw that as a major,
not only betrayal by the United States,
but also a bunch of conspiracy theories
started popping up of, you know,
why would you introduce so many firearms into Mexico?
The anti-American sentiment in Mexico
is at an all-time high, and it's been growing.
I think as a Mexican,
somebody who was actually born down there
and experienced some of the violence
that some of these firearms help foster down there,
I think the biggest misconception about gun smuggling
is that these guns,
somehow there's a lot of effort being put forth
by the Mexican government
to stop these guns from coming down to Mexico.
The straw purchasers up here get a slap on the wrist.
I think, yeah, some of those penalties should be steeper.
The Mexican government through Marcelo Ebrard
has basically sued a lot
of the major American gun manufacturers.
The only group legally allowed
to sell firearms in Mexico is the military.
So it's interesting that the Mexican government
did a lawsuit against American gun manufacturers,
but they didn't mention in that lawsuit
the people that they buy their firearms from.
Mexico has a very big problem with corruption.
And it has attempted many times
to curtail this corruption by developing whole organizations
to try and keep police honest.
I was put through FBI background checks.
I did polygraph testing every year.
But even with all of those safety precautions,
people flipped. And when they left,
they didn't hand over their rifles or their guns sometimes,
so they would take them with them.
I was a Baja police agent for about 12 years.
I did that job till it was,
till it was time to leave.
The corruption levels in the institution
that I was in became completely unsustainable.
And anybody that wanted to actually do their job
and be honest about it
was not in fashion or in vogue at that time.
I had to leave my job in a hurry.
There's no retirement, no severance package.
It's a pretty hard job to do.
It's a thankless one.
But there's a lot of people that are in that fight.
A lot of people that are honest.
A lot of people that never took a dime.
I somehow made it out alive of that system.
After concluding my 12 years of service down there,
I came to the United States,
and utilizing some of the experience and know-how
that I got from that experience down south,
I've now become a subject-matter expert
and do training for civilians,
private companies, and the government across the country.
Specifically gun smuggling has armed the people
that killed a lot of the people that I used to work with.
It definitely has had an effect.
Not just on me, but on most of my generation.
And I want to give a voice to
the countless people down there that went through
some of the experiences that I went through.
Some of the widows left behind,
some of the orphans left behind
by some of the conflicts that went on down there.
I'm trying to keep that memory
and that voice alive for them.