(USNewsBreak.com) – Trafficking across the Southern Border, whether it’s people, drugs, or weapons, has proven to be a big issue. While most people are focusing on the drugs and migrants coming into the country, there’s another issue as well: the transport of weapons out of the United States into Mexico. Following the release of a CBS Reports investigation last month, one US senator is pushing the Biden Administration for answers.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wrote a letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on Tuesday, October 10. In the correspondence, he referenced a CBS investigation that covered how Mexican cartels are using trafficking networks within the US to import guns. Specifically, he inquired about Project Thor, a multi-agency effort aimed at “identifying and dismantling the cartels’ international weapons supply chains across the” United States.
Grassley pushes Biden administration for information on gun trafficking into Mexico after CBS Reports investigation https://t.co/MKf9NlW2Nn
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) October 10, 2023
Project Thor was established in 2018, and the ATF denied it funding in 2022. Grassley wants to know why. To that effect, the senator asked the ATF to send Congress records the bureau has related to the initiative, a list of governmental agencies involved, how much funding the ATF dedicated to the project, and statistics about the number of trafficking rings dismantled or disrupted and the number of firearms seized while the operation was in effect.
Grassley also took the time to call out the ATF for redirecting its “apparently limited resources” from catching these cartels to “encroaching on the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.” The senator has asked the ATF to furnish the information requested no later than October 24.
Grassley was previously involved in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, an ATF program that ultimately led to a scandal. Agents allowed weapons to enter Mexico unhindered so they could trace the weapons and find out where they ended up. It became a huge scandal when one of those weapons was used to kill a Border Patrol agent in 2010.
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