Agency turf battles thwart efforts to combat arms trafficking

The two agencies with primary responsibility for cracking down on the flow of illegal weapons between the United States and Mexico do not consistently or effectively coordinate their efforts, leading to missed opportunities and jeopardizing investigations, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

In a report released on Thursday, GAO said an outdated interagency agreement and fights over jurisdiction hindered operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a Homeland Security Department agency, and the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"Officials from both agencies in Washington and in the field cited examples of inadequate communication on investigations, unwillingness to share information and dysfunctional operations," the report said.

During an operation at a gun show, for instance, an ICE agent unknowingly conducted surveillance on an ATF agent pursuing a suspected trafficker. In another case, ATF conducted a "controlled-delivery" operation to identify traffickers in Mexico without pre-clearing the export of weapons with ICE, jeopardizing the lives of agents from multiple agencies as well as Mexican law-enforcement officials, and risking that the weapons would end up in the wrong hands.

In other situations ICE and ATF officials refused to share critical documents on investigations. ICE officials told GAO that ATF sometimes wouldn't provide documentation involving interstate firearms cases ICE was investigating, so in retaliation, ICE refused to provide a required immigration certificate to ATF for arms-trafficking cases involving immigration violations.

Additionally, the agencies failed to share vital information at the El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas, and essentially established separate operations within the center, GAO found.

The need to curb the flow of weapons into Mexico has taken on a sense of urgency in recent months as violence in that country, especially along the 2,000-mile U.S. border, has grown. Drug-related murders in Mexico more than doubled from around 2,700 in 2007 to more than 6,200 in 2008. Murders this year are projected to be on par with 2008, the watchdog agency said.

About 87 percent of firearms seized and traced by Mexican authorities during the last five years were found to have originated in the United States, according to GAO. The arms increasingly are high-caliber, high-powered semiautomatic weapons used mostly by Mexican drug cartels to protect their operations from Mexican authorities and other cartels.

The issue is of growing concern to U.S. officials, who see drug-related violence as a threat not only to the Mexican government, which has been combating the cartels, but to the United States. According to the Justice Department's 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexican cartels represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States and they maintain distribution networks in at least 230 U.S. cities.

"The influence of Mexican [drug-trafficking organizations] over domestic drug trafficking is unrivaled," the threat assessment stated. "In fact, intelligence estimates indicate a vast majority of the cocaine available in U.S. drug markets is smuggled by Mexican [organizations] across the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexican [groups] control drug distribution in most U.S. cities, and they are gaining strength in markets that they do not yet control."

The recently updated National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy for the first time includes a chapter on arms trafficking. Prior to the update, released earlier this month, there was no governmentwide strategy that addressed weapons shipments to Mexico.

"At this point, it is not clear whether the implementation plan [for the strategy] will include performance indicators and other accountability mechanisms to overcome shortcomings raised in our report," GAO wrote. Additionally, it's unclear whether new resources the Homeland Security Department has directed toward border operations will be tied to the new strategy, GAO said.

Federal gun laws also present challenges, because they restrict the information that can be reported on firearms purchases. Private gun sales, including those made at gun shows, do not require that background checks be conducted on buyers.

GAO recommended that the attorney general report to Congress on possible solutions to data collection issues, and that the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary finalize a memorandum of understanding addressing ICE-ATF turf battles and monitor its implementation.

Homeland Security officials largely concurred with GAO's findings, but questioned the watchdog's interpretation of the relationship between ICE and ATF. GAO, however, maintained that: "The evidence in the report clearly demonstrates coordination problems between ICE and ATF."

Officials at Justice did not provide a formal comment on the report.