200k-500k U.S. firearms
flow across the southern border into Mexico and beyond every year.
American-made guns are fueling the humanitarian and immigration crisis at our southern border.
Immigration at our southern border is fundamentally linked to U.S. gun trafficking and weak gun industry oversight.
The U.S. gun industry plays an alarming role in arming transnational cartels and criminal organizations, as well as enabling other human rights abusers. Guns trafficked across the southern border of the United States fuel devastating cycles of violence in Mexico and Latin America, driving mass migration to our border. Rather than costly, inefficient, and dehumanizing walls, tariffs, or troop deployments, effectively addressing immigration requires surging resources to enforce existing gun laws and hold the gun industry accountable for illegal or reckless sales and trafficking.
The conduit through which illegal guns flow from the U.S. into Mexico is known as the “Iron River.” An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 guns, most of which start in the legal retail market in the U.S., are trafficked into Mexico every year. This is a direct result of lax enforcement of America’s gun laws and a lack of oversight of the U.S. gun industry — creating the perfect environment for firearms to easily be funneled from the legal market into the illegal market.
The result is a migration crisis fueled by U.S. firearms. In fact, more than three-fourths of families arriving at the southern border cite violence as a key reason for leaving their home country. Contrary to Trump’s rhetoric, migrants are not “invaders” bringing crime to the United States — they are fleeing from it.
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¾ of families
arriving at the U.S. southern border cite violence as a key reason for leaving their country of origin.
American-made guns don’t just kill Americans — the United States has been the world’s largest weapons exporter for the last several decades, and just as guns trafficked into the illegal market are used to harm people in the U.S., they are also used to harm people across the world.
Between 2016 and 2022, almost 70% of crime guns recovered in Mexico were manufactured in or imported from the United States. U.S. guns then travel south to Central and South America, including a majority of the crime guns recovered in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
The gun industry profits while cartels arm themselves with American weapons - it’s time to stop the flow. President Trump can uphold the promise he made to President Sheinbaum by taking action TODAY. 🧵⤵️
— Kris Brown | President, @BradyUnited.org (@krisbrown.bradyunited.org) February 8, 2025 at 11:01 AM
To address undocumented immigration at the southern border, the Trump administration should strengthen gun industry oversight and stop arming cartels.
The Trump Administration’s Immigration Agenda Will Worsen Gun Violence at Home and Abroad
President Trump has made cracking down on undocumented immigration a key pillar of his presidency. He also entered into an agreement with Mexico President Sheinbaum to prevent high-powered guns from being trafficked into Mexico. But despite this promise, the Trump administration’s agenda actively undermines border security and regional stability, which in turn fuels greater gun violence that drives immigration at our border.
The Trump administration’s decision to divert resources and personnel from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) — the federal agency charged with overseeing the gun industry and stopping the flow of illegal firearms — to immigration enforcement while simultaneously seeking to roll back successful measures to prevent gun trafficking will have disastrous consequences.
Instead of urgently protecting our communities from rogue gun dealers and stopping the flow of illegal guns across the southern border, this move pulls ATF agents from their duties preventing gun crime to support day-to-day immigration enforcement. This diversion of ATF resources has a direct impact on the ability of agents to curb firearms trafficking, which will worsen our nation’s gun violence crisis.
The Trump administration’s plans to address immigration include building a wall, deploying military assets domestically and into neighboring countries, and reassigning critical federal law enforcement agencies away from their primary responsibilities to participate in immigration raids. These misguided plans will have a lower positive impact on immigration than robust enforcement of gun laws and will instead fuel gun violence both in America and abroad.
Solutions to Prevent Gun Trafficking and Address Immigration at the Southern Border
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ATF Agents
Return ATF agents to their congressionally authorized roles in disrupting the illegal supply chain of weapons to cartels, paramilitary groups, and other violent groups.
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ATF Funding
Direct and properly fund the ATF to increase inspections of gun dealers whose firearms are often diverted to the illegal market and revoke licenses of rogue gun dealers that continuously break the law.
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Investigations
Investigate gun sellers, distributors, and manufacturers whose weapons frequently end up in cartel hands and revoke licenses of those unwilling to change their business practice.
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Enforcement
Strengthen enforcement of existing gun laws, like penalties for traffickers and dealers who enable illegal sales.
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Export Controls
Enforce strict export controls to ensure U.S. firearms don’t end up in the possession of cartels, terrorist organizations, and other groups that compromise national security.
These sensible solutions, many of which simply involve enforcing existing law, have proven effective at stopping gun trafficking. Through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, the Biden-Harris administration created new federal offenses for gun trafficking and straw purchasing, spurring over 280 criminal cases against terrorists, traffickers, and others fueling the flow of illegal guns to cartels. They issued a rule to regulate ghost guns, which are impossible to trace and were increasingly being used in crimes. They eliminated the dangerous “gun show loophole” that was often exploited by gun traffickers by requiring more dealers to become licensed and run background checks. And they instructed the Commerce Department to tighten the export of U.S. guns to prevent them from landing in the hands of terrorists, drug cartels, traffickers, and anyone else who poses a threat to US national security and human rights.
Not only do these policies address violence across the border, but they also make us safer at home.
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Landmark gun violence prevention policies passed under the Biden administration helped create a 50-year low in violent crime.
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U.S. mass shootings and gun deaths fell to lowest level in five years in 2024 thanks to gun violence prevention policies.
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2024 saw a 24% drop in mass shootings thanks to gun violence prevention laws and policies.
We Need to Act Now
The Trump administration could take meaningful action to address immigration today by responsibly overseeing the U.S. gun industry and finally stopping the flow of illegal weapons across our southern border.
