SEATTLE - U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted a passenger bus headed to Mexico that contained tens of thousands of bullets hidden in more than two dozens of black bins.
According to Border Report, the passenger bus was coming from Phoenix, Arizona its final destination being Zacatecas, Mexico. After CBP officers flagged the vehicle and asked some routine questions to the drivers, agents sent the bus to a cargo lot for an in-depth inspection, court records showed.
After the passengers got off and retrieved their luggage, border officers noticed nobody picked up 26 black bins from the cargo compartment. When inquired by agents if they happened to be transporting firearms or ammo in their employer's commercial vehicle, drivers Lucio Enriquez Garcia and Ramiro Antonio Barbosa Resendiz said no.
Both Enriquez and Barbosa also told officers the cargo had been placed there before they got on the bus. CBP officials instructed the men to remove the unmarked bins from the bus, but they were too heavy. Once Border Patrol agents took over, thousands of boxes with ammunition were found inside the bags.
Concretely, officers found 1,650 boxes with 33,000 rounds of 7.62 x 39 ammunition, typically used in AK-47-style rifles. They also found nearly 3,000 boxes that contained almost 60,000 rounds of .223-caliber bullets, commonly used in the civilian version of the military M16 rifle. In Mexico, guns and ammunition are illegal except with permits from the Mexican Ministry of Defense.
The seizure almost triples the amount of ammunition CBP officers performing outbound enforcement inspections at the El Paso field office have made during the last three fiscal years (FY) combined. CBP officers seized 15,678 rounds in FY 2021, 7,224 rounds in FY 2022 and 11, 205 rounds in FY 2023.
According to a criminal complaint filed on Aug. 19 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Barbosa and Garcia initially told Homeland Security Investigation special agents they had no knowledge of what was in the bags, but thought it might be machine parts.
As the questioning continued, Garcia allegedly "changed his story" and told agents he had delivered 18 similar totes on two previous trips to an individual in Durango, Mexico. According to the complaint affidavit, Resendiz also changed his version of the story and allegedly said he had transported totes with Garcia on at least one previous occasion and took them down on the side of a road in Durango.
Both men have been charged with smuggling goods from the United States, an offense that carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison plus fines. A preliminary hearing for both Garcia and Resendiz has been set for Aug. 22 in U.S. Federal District Court in El Paso.
According to data from CBP, more than 300,000 rounds of ammunition have been seized by agents during fiscal year 2024 in the Southwest border, that is over 50,000 more than the total seized in 2023. Between Oct. 1 of 2023 and July of 2024, CBP agents have reported 4,125 seizures across the country, with more than 96 percent of them being ammo and gun part seizures.
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