Man indicted after feds seize 187 guns in Del Rio
A Dallas man has been indicted after he was caught in Del Rio near the Texas-Mexico border smuggling 187 firearms in a hidden truck-trailer compartment, according to an arrest affidavit.
Santiago Ramirez, 26, was driving a Dodge 1500 pickup hauling an enclosed box trailer about 1:30 a.m. Oct. 30, heading to Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers inspected his truck after noticing that an inside wall of the trailer appeared to have been tampered with, according to the affidavit.
Officers X-rayed the trailer and saw what they believed to be guns inside its back wall. After searching the trailer, they found 187 firearms wrapped in cellophane in the wall, the affidavit said.
Customs and Border Protection called in the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, whose agents interviewed Ramirez. The truck and trailer had license plates from Alabama, but agents found that Ramirez is from Dallas.
According to the affidavit, Ramirez told the ATF that he had been trafficking firearms for someone known to him as “El Tio” (The Uncle), whom he met in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca. Ramirez said El Tio offered him $6,000 each time Ramirez smuggled firearms from the United States to Mexico.
Ramirez said he would drive the box truck from Oaxaca to Dallas, where he would drop it off at a supermarket. Someone else would hide firearms inside the trailer, and he would drive it back to Oaxaca.
He said he had smuggled guns twice before, but this time El Tio told him to buy 10 of the guns he was hauling back, and he said El Tio sent another man to give Ramirez money so Ramirez could buy them, the affidavit said.
The affidavit added that Ramirez said he bought four .22-caliber rifles that week from a man at a gas station in Dallas for $2,000 and six more .22-caliber rifles from another man at a gas station in Dallas for $3,000.
Ramirez said neither he nor El Tio had a license to export firearms from the U.S. to Mexico, the affidavit said.
The indictment charges him with one count of conspiracy to traffic firearms, one count of trafficking firearms, one count of conspiracy to smuggle goods from the U.S. and one count of smuggling goods from the U.S.
The ATF is still investigating the case, including tracing the guns’ serial numbers, records show.