of being president of the subcommittee on the western hemisphere will come to order i'm very happy to have this hearing albeit a day late we as you know possible with all the votes we had yesterday to do the hearing so i apologize for any inconvenience but i'm delighted that we are able to do the hearing today because the subject is really important and i must say that i've never seen so much interest interest all over  media and people in general and the reports the courts of our hearing and the finding have been all over the country in newspapers on television in mexico as well so this has been very widely covered and i'm delighted that the media has picked up and ran with this because it's a very very important issue so today's hearing will focus on the just released government accountability office report on u s efforts to combat arms trafficking to mexico i commissioned this report with a former ranking member of this subcommittee dan burton and several other subcommittee members last year the availability of firearms illegally flowing from the united states into mexico has armed an emboldened a dangerous criminal element in mexico and it has made the border work with the drug cartels even more deadly data in the o report shows that ninety three percent of firearms recovered in mexico and trace in f y two thousand eight hundred eight in the united states and f y o six and zero seven the number was ninety five percent now i have been going around saying ninety percent of the guns committed the guns used by the drug cartels to commit crimes come from the united states and now it's even more than ninety percent it's just unacceptable it's just totally unacceptable as far as i'm concerned it's not the first time that this subcommittee is focused i want the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms and explosives a t f as we've heard to as the i in river of guns illegally flowing from the united states into mexico when the merit initiative was announced in october of two thousand and seven the united states and mexico got a joint statement in which the u s pledged to and i quote intensify our efforts unquote to combat the trafficking of weapons to mexico as chairman of this up committee i've been waiting for too long for us to live up to this commitment and i will not let up on the pressure until we do so it has been a year and a half since the mar initiative was announced shockingly what do we find in the g a o report it states that just until a couple of weeks ago the u s strategy to combat firearms trafficking to mexico was nowhere to be found on june fifth th national drug control policy released its own nine national southwest border counternarcotics strategy which for the first time includes a chapter on combating illicit firearms trafficking the mexico but imho implementation still has not begun it is mind boggling that for a year and a half we've had no interagency strategy to address this major problem but instead every light and uncoordinated efforts by a variety of agencies a strategy to combat arms trafficking the mexico should have been in place and running on october twenty second two thousand and seven the day that president bush and calderon announced the merit initiative i'm glad that president obama has finally begun to address  fifth announcement was certainly a step in the right direction it was the president's announcement and we now anxiously await further direction on this interagency strategy and the roles and responsibilities of various u s agencies as the g a o reports f and immigration and customs enforcement the two main agencies implementing efforts to combat firearms trafficking the mexico did not effectively coordinate their efforts i fully endorse the g a o its recommendation that the attorney general  secretary of homeland security finalize a memorandum of understanding between a t f and ice i was also police a t f a t f we know and ice being immigration and customs enforcement i was also pl author a provision in the house passed a foreign relations authorization act which we just passed last week which will create an interagency task force on the prevention of illicit small arms trafficking in the western hemisphere to assure that our efforts to curb firearms trafficking are better coordinated not just with regard to mexico but with all countries in latin america and the caribbean i was not surprised to learn in the g a o report that certain provisions of federal firearms l laws including the terror to amendment present challenges to u s efforts to curb firearms trafficking to mexico current restrictions on collecting and reporting information on firearms purchases not only make the jobs of our fin police officers more difficult than they already are but also inhibit our ability to effectively curb firearms trafficking to mexico and i've said many many times that this is not a second amendment issue i support second amendment rights this is an issue illicit firearms going south of the border g a o reports that of the eighty seven percent of firearms recovered in mexico originating from the united states between two thousand and four and two thousand and nine hundred percent were manufactured in third country and imported into the united states before being trafficked into mexico this is why we must once again in force the ban on him imported assault weapons that was previously enforced during the administrations of president george h w bush and bill clinton in recent years the george w bush administration quietly abandoning foresman of the import ban as a result the u firearms it is flooded with imported inexpensive military style assault weapons these assault weapons which often come from eastern europe or china are being trafficked from the u s across the border into mexico to get around the ban importers have been able to skirt restrictions by bringing in assault weapons parts and reassembling them with a small number of u s made parts to other words the guns i ninety eight or ninety nine percent the same but they are with it they make a little change in it and therefore they get around the ban that's also totally unacceptable in forcing the existing import ban requires no legislative action and would be a win win for the u s and mexico and for every twelfth i sent a letter to president obama signed by a bipartisan group of fifty two of my colleagues urging him to once again inforce the ban on imported assault weapons we are waiting for president obama to act the data in today's report only reinforces the need to return to enforcement of this ban finally i would like to once again call upon the senate to ratify the into american convention against the licit manufacturing and trafficking in firearms also known as president obama has publicly called for the senate to ratify stiff and so i secretary of state hillary clinton this treaty was signed during the clinton administration and must be ratified to the united states can tell our friends in the hemisphere that we are serious in addressing the problems of illegal weapons trafficking before i close i would like to personally thank the g a o team who put together this extraordinary report over the past year and i want to mention their names just for one goal bell addison ricks and lisa helm thank you all for your excellent work with that i would now like to call on my friend the ranking member mack for his opening statement thank you mr chairman and thank you for holding this hearing and i know it's been difficult to get to this hearing because of all the votes yesterday but you have a great staff and you guys were able to to make it happen today i also want to thank mr ford for being here and his testimony today is i think very important to this issue as we move forward and mr chairman i hope it's appropriate but i'd also like to welcome me mr chairman i do want to i do think it's important that as we move forward that it is my belief that there are many flaws in this report and to to base future action on a report that in my opinion is flawed doesn't make a lot of sense what we do know for sure is that violent crime in mexico is on the rise which is a horrible thing but this report makes conclusions based upon opinions and assumptions example the report states that officials have said that they saw no reason why drug cartels would go to asia or eastern europe to get weapons when it is so easy to get them from the u s but on page twenty three list washington state as a source of weapons if the drug lords are going to washington state to get weapons why not venezuela venezuela is much closer and flooded with military weapons i also hear a lot about this number ninety or ninety five percent of the the weapons are you coming from the us well i would suggest that and even by their own report they don't know the total number of weapons that are coming into mexico and that number or the ninety or ninety five percent represents the number of guns that they can trace and by and large it is it is the u s weapons that are traceable i would ask how many weapons have they been able to trace from  venezuela and i think this report contradicts itself it makes up concrete conclusions but also says there is no way of knowing the ultimate facts example the report says that quote available information suggests that most firearms come from the u s i think it's got to be very difficult when you ask the g a o to do a report when they're when you're trying to put numbers around something that is almost impossible to to come up with the idea that all of the weapons that ninety percent of all of the weapons in mexico come from the u s is one just unbelievable and two i think the report also if you read it carefully suggests that they don't know the total number of guns that are coming into mexico and the assumptions that are made are based not based on fact but based upon suggestions and one one's belief  i do recognize though that there is a problem over the border in mexico and i would suggest to the committee and to people out there watching that the way to if you really want to get this under control the way to do it is to secure our border mexico and the united states has a shared interest in securing our border on one hand mexico doesn't want money and guns moving south across the border into mexico and on the on the other hand we don't want criminals and terrorists coming north across the border into the u s we have a shared benefit by securing the border and i believe it is that action that will ultimately if you want to get at the guns that are moving from us into mexico the way to do it is strengthen the border mr chairman again i thank you for holding this hearing and your tenacity on making it happen because of the challenges that we face but also mentally i think where we have a hearing and we are going to however this chapter is only a basic framework with an implementation plan to follow later this summer we can enforce export controls of arms from our country without limiting our country's basic second amendment rights  of the border to deal with it so we might want to consider that effort and i look forward to your testimony thank you very much mr green mr paine let me also thank you mr chairman for your persistence and for having us have some way to stop the flow of illegal weapons across the border but also we really need to take a look at how to get guns off the street expectancy in the world however we don't and that's because of the tremendous number of violent deaths that happen in the united states of america which is very rare in your where guns are not where people are not in love with guns as we so many in this nation and so hopefully we can start to really get some sound thinking strategy which for the first time includes a chapter on combating illicit firearms trafficking to mexico so i've had many many discussions about this with miss giffords and it's an issue of much concern to her to her and in the fall i'm hoping to go to her district and perhaps do a field hearing with this subcommittee to talk about this issue and other issues immigration whatever involving  the violence and the drug smuggling across the us mexico border i want to welcome sir for good afternoon it's great to have you here today i was recently appointed the vice chair of the u s mexico in a parliamentary work group where just a couple weeks ago we mexicans and americans came together members of the house and the senate on both sides of the border to talk about the variety of issues that we have at hand and it's an important meeting but particularly in light of what's happening with the illegal immigration and drug smuggling and the violence as well last february six colleagues and i requested the g a o report to look at the flow of firearms across the border and in contradiction to some comments were made earlier i'm very proud of the work that the g a o does as well we asked to do a report looking at the checkpoint issue along the us mexico border and to see the dedication of members of the g a o that come out they get to know the district in the area sometimes better than the members frankly it is incredibly impressive if you please compliment and pass on the word it is a tremendous resource that we have vailable to us and i think your work is excellent i think this hearing is timely looking at drug violence since two thousand and six claimed over ten thousand lives just last week the mexican army captured twenty five gunmen in the state of chihuahua twenty nine automatic rifles at the same day that authorities in the western state of reported that three federal agents had been killed in two attacks along the highway and investigators there recovered more than five hundred shell casings at the two crime scenes so this report allows us to highlight the need for additional resources to get on both sides of the border we're not going to solve this problem on our side they're not going to solve it on their side unless we work cooperatively together again and i do represent the most traffic district in terms of illegal immigrants coming into the united states the tucson sector of the border patrol and we see more violence and more guns and more drugs flowing both ways and it's a problem that we have to address and thank you for your leadership on this and looking forward to hearing your testimony thank you very much mr jeffords before i call on i have met with him five times five times in four different countries actually more so than i've met with any other leader in the in the hemisphere and i i must say that i admire president c into intelligence and his great decision to not just sit quietly and allow the drug lords and the drug cartels to continue to wreak havoc in this country he's moved forcefully against them which is probably a contribution to the reason why they are now being defiant and acting out and doing so much more destruction damage to try to push him around and push back and try to show him who's boss but we have a stake in the mexican government and the mexican president declaring that they're the ones who run things in mexico not the cartels who are trying to destroy so many lives just for the money that they can mine their pockets with so i just want to say that i and other members of this subcommittee admire the work that president calderon has done in this regard and i think that the bilateral the relationship between the united states and mexico is such an important relationship that anything that we do needs to be coordinated with mexico with regard of course to two border policy and everything else that we've talked about immigration drug trafficking gun trafficking all the problems we're only going to be successful if we work on this together but i do want to say again that i am delighted to have had five bilateral meetings with him private meetings  with with subcommittee members with some other members of anonymous subcommittee and privately and i admire his his tenacity and his courage i want to say that so now i am pleased to introduce o you back to the subcommittee once again in fact you've been with g a o so long as mr ford you even there we had president ford so it's nice to have someone with a lot of experience and i look forward to listening to your testimony today mexico in recent years violence along the mexican border has escalated dramatically as the administration of president felipe calderon has sought to combat the growing power of mexican drug trafficking organizations and to curb their ability to operate with impunity in areas of mexico mexican officials have come to regard illicit firearms as the number one crime problem facing the country according to a department of justice two thousand and nine national drug threat assessment mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest organized crime threat in the united states controlling drug distribution in many u s cities in particular law enforcement reporting indicate mexican drug trafficking organizations maintain drug distribution networks and drug supply distributions in over two hundred thirty u s cities in march of two thousand and nine the department of homeland security announced that it plans to increase resources on the u s mexican border including more personnel and greater use of available technologies and as the chairman mentioned in just two weeks ago the offices of the o n d c p released its new southwest border counternarcotics strategy which for the first time contains a chapter on arms today i'm going to discuss the data that's available on the type sources and uses of arms the key challenges that confront the u s government in its efforts to combat illicit sales of firearms in the united states and to stem the flow of these arms across the southwest border into mexico the challenges facing u s agencies collaborating with the mexican authorities and the u s government strategy for addressing this issue available evidence indicates that a large proportion of firearms fueling the mexican drug violence originated in the united states looting a growing number of increasingly lethal weapons while it is impossible to know how many firearms are illegally trafficked into mexico in any given year over twenty thousand or around eighty seven percent of the firearms and traced over the past five years have originated in the united states according to a t f the data we're using is a t f that week spent a lot of time working with them and i can get into that in the q and a about what we know about this issue we believe this is the best that's currently available that indicates what the nature of the problem is in the last three years over ninety percent of the guns that were traced from mexico came from the united states according to a t f the chart that i've got to my that number up it's over twenty thousand guns over the last five years of that amount a t f data shows that approximately sixty eight percent of the firearms were manufactured in the united states and nineteen percent were manufactured in third countries their remaining amounts a t f was able was not able to identify for us exactly where the guns were manufactured according to u s and mexican government officials these firearms have been increasingly used have been increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years for example many of these firearms are a high caliber high powered weapon such as a k forty seven and a ar fifteen type semi  d semiautomatic rifles according to a t f trace data many of these firearms came from gun shops and gun shows in the southwest border such as texas california arizona and mexican government of and law enforcement officials stated that most guns trafficked in mexico are intended to support the operations of mexican drug trafficking organizations which are responsible for most of the trafficking of arms into mexico the us government faces several significant challenges in its efforts to combat the illicit sale of firearms into stem the flow of arms across the border first according to a t f officials certain provisions of some federal firearms laws present challenges in their efforts to investigate firearms cases the three areas that they identified for us include the restrictions on collecting and reporting information on firearms purchases the lack of required background checks for private firearm sales and limitations on reporting requirements on multiple gun sales another major challenge that we found is that  the two primary agencies responsible for implementing efforts to address the smuggling of arms and the den of find in nature the problem are not consistently coordinating their efforts affectively in part because the agencies lack clear rules and responsibilities and have been operating under an on on excuse me outdated internet agency agreement this is resulted in some instances of duplicate initiatives and confusion in operations additionally we found agencies lax systematic analysis and reporting on data related to arms trafficking and that they were also unable to provide complete information to us on the results of their efforts to stop guns from being smuggled into mexico we believe this type of information could be useful to better understand the nature of the problem and to help plan ways to address it and to make more progress in stopping the illicit smuggling of arms into mexico u s law enforcement agencies in this apartment state have provided some assistance to mexican counterparts in combat in arms trafficking but these efforts face several key challenges u s law enforcement agencies have built working relationships with mexican federal state and local law enforcement as well as the mexican military which is given the united states the opportunity to provide the mexican government counterparts with technical on operational assistance to address the firearms problem for example although the merit initiative which provides general law enforcement in counter narcotics assistance to mexico does it does not provide dedicated funding to address the issue of arms trafficking a number of excuse me a number of officials told us that would be helpful to combat arms trafficking such as establishing bilateral multilateral multi agency arms trafficking task force to help address this problem further more u s assistance has been limited in helping the mexican government to expand its capabilities to provide better trace information to the u s government to better understand that overall nature of that of gun trafficking and the problems in the country ok cording to mexican and s government officials extensive corruption in federal state and local levels is another problem that impedes u s efforts to develop the fact that will effective and dependable partnerships with the mexican government mexican government officials indicated that anti corruption measures such as increased use of polygraph and psychological testing background checks and salary increases are efforts underway to a try to address this problem mr chairman i'm not going to mention  the new strategy other than to acknowledge the fact it's the first time that our government has put together an articulated strategy to deal with the gun issue this strategy is new it just came out two weeks ago there are some key issues related to this strategy that have not yet been fully announced by the administration the key issues in our mind have to do with an implementation plan that will go along with the strategy and we think it's critical that this plan have a clear sense of who is going to be responsible for carrying out the key parts of this strategy and it will have some performance indicators so we'll know somewhere down the road how effective this strategy is working and we have a recommendation on our report that provide that type of information finally mr chairman we made a series of recommendations to the attorney general's office and homeland security covering such issues as addressing the issue of how some of the legal constraints might be addressed and if they feel necessary to approach the congress with whatever remedies they believe need to be taken that they finalize this memorandum of understanding that's been under negotiation for several months to better improve their working relationship between a t f and ice that they improve their data gathering techniques related to the nature of the problem  gun smuggling that they expedite their working relationship with the mexican government to enhance the trace capability so that we have a better understanding of the nature of gun trafficking in mexico and statement i'd be happy to answer any question thank you mr ford let me say that in about ten minutes i think we're going to have a series of votes so i would like to see if we could perhaps conclude with them and within the next ten or fifteen or twenty minutes perhaps the first ten minutes or so of the vote we can continue let me just ask you this well now i guess i was a little off the top with the vote let me just ask you this  june for president obama said that there was going to be a new a new strategy a stance simply to plug the holes with some of the things that we found wanting in in the in the report help me to understand what happened to report there are a lot of good things in that report there are things in that report that i think many of us probably on both sides of the aisle would want implemented when the administration starts to implemented what is the mechanism for incorporating some of the recommendations in your report i know the president doesn't have to use your recommendations but i would hope since it was a year's work and it was well thought out and well done that the administration would look to this report so help me to understand how that dynamic works because otherwise the administration's coming up with with a whole way of doing things which may to some  degree coincide with the report but perhaps not i would hope that they would read the report and would incorporate a lot of what the report says into their recommendations for change there's a couple of things first of all we did get official comments from the department of homeland security and state department in both of those agencies agreed with the recommendations that we had them so we hope that they will actually implement they said they official comments to our draft so at this point we don't do not know whether they agree with our recommendations and whether or not they will act on them i can tell you that we have had several discussions with officials at a in who have indicated to us that they do intend in fact to put out an implementation plan directly related to the strategy and that that plan will contain accountability and performance measures that will help congress understand whether or not we're having any success they haven't told us that officially but on officially they've told us that so i have confidence that some action will be taken in that area i cannot comment on the department of justice they did not provide us with any information about whether they're going to agree to our recommendations or not well i am going to do a letter to the president and urge him to have his administration take into account this report when they are formulating what they're going to do with with this and their january fourth statement again was a good one but you know the proof is in the putting i hope they will listen to what you have to say i'm going to leave it for just for my question to give everybody else a chance to ask a question they want because we obviously have some time constraints right now so i'll call on mr mack thank you mr chairman and as i mentioned in my opening statement i i'm having a little bit of difficulty in our having any confidence real confidence in the report not to say that i don't think some of the recommendations that you come up with be good ones but i don't know that the report itself is something that we should have put a lot of value in i would most of the things that you've talked about most of the number you've talked about has been based upon the number of guns that you were able to trace and we know that a majority of those guns that are that you're able to trace are the ones that come from the u s but that leaves out a majority of the guns that are being  d so i'd ask how many guns were you able to trace to cuba or venezuela bolivia or ecuador or other continents that would be a question that i would have for you also in you know just i think two days ago we were at another hearing together where you had said that radio or t v marti that less than one percent of the people in  r cubans see it and i suggested then that how could you do how would you even contemplate this someone a cuban would answer the phone and say yes i watch t v marti when they're in cuba living under a brutal dictatorship so these two things kind this report and that report i have i'm having a hard time having any kind of real confidence in the report itself so if you could comment on how many of the weapons that we know that come from cuba venezuela bolivia ecuador and if you agree that if we had a strong border data is based on guns that were identified and traced from mexico as we clearly stated in our report that represents approximately a quarter of the guns that the mexican government reported that they seized in two thousand and eight so we clearly identify that in the report secondly the with regard to that data is the data it's twenty thousand guns let me let me just say this so it would  be so you would you would also say that to say that ninety percent or ninety five percent of the guns in mexico are coming from the u s is false that is not and i actually don't say that but other people are saying that well i think it's important that our report t a that our report clearly states the facts the facts are it's ninety percent of the gone that were traced that that day that we were able to that the mexican government and a t f were able to send back here to be traced f it does not represent that seventy five percent of the guns that we don't know where they came from because they were never submitted for trace that's clearly stated in our report so if someone's missed reporting that that's not my problem our report is based on the facts the second thing i think is more important and this is in the things that i think that you all should be concerned about is regardless of whether we know one hundred percent of all of the guns that have been seized in mexico where they came from i think we should be concerned by the fact that twenty thousand of those guns we know for sure came from here and i think that in terms of us coming through with a policy and a program to address this problem at the border is to address your second question yes i do think we need to tighten up on the border when we started this project our government was not this was not a priority to stop southbound trafficking of arms our agencies were focused on northbound activit and most of the agencies that we dealt with in the course of this job were just not focused on the whole issue of arms so i think we need to tighten up on the border i think it's an important thing i think the new strategy that just came out is an effort to try to do that but the data that we use in our report we believe is sound and we do believe that that further effort actually to expand tracing in mexico will further light on this issue if if in fact we can get the government to send more traces here the gentleman's time has expired i know we're running out of time i want to give my my colleagues a chance to quickly ask maybe we'll do three questions in a row and have you have you respond to what i know mr green you can do a quick question and we'll do the three questions and then we'll we'll we'll conclude i'd like to ask questions about two issues one i know you described that the united states attorneys could not have they didn't have data on cases where they made on arms smuggling do you believe we should be helpful to establish guidelines for divine tracking arms trafficking cases any additional legislation needed trafficking in your opinion what level of resources be necessary and what areas would we need to be able to do our job on our side of the border to control the illegal export of firearms let me  can do that in under under a minute if you could i know it's difficult and i apologize ok well let me see if i understood your question correctly the first person issue is whether or not there's more that could be done your report shows we don't even know how many cases are making yeah that's correct one of the difficulties we had in the course of this job every agency we asked what information do you have that would show a number of prosecutions smuggling we were not able to find any good data from any of the agencies including the u s attorney's office on the number of cases they prosecuted that were related to arms traveling to mexico they couldn't give us any real good data on that i know personally they're making some cases now but  three hundred fifty million dollars of allocation of resources to address the issue of southbound trafficking put more people on the border to do more investigations more screening of cars as they go south we haven't really examine that why it's taken them this long to convert that process and we don't think it should be that difficult to do that with there are some logistical issues because one of the with in mexico is they want to be able to report information throughout the entire country right now they have very limited capability in terms of people they know how to use them itself they have to be trained and secondly they're the point the system throughout the entire country so that may be one of the constraining factors but we have been seized in criminal activity so the volume is increasing but i do not know at this point whether or not they have been able to expand beyond the twenty five percent that was mentioned in our report but this year we haven't got the data for two thousand and nine yet so we don't know whether it's expanded to thirty five percent or whatever and there's no way to tell what where the guns were purchased from are there any kind of markings on the guns that you could trace it back to the gun