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A 25-year-old illegal immigrant was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for trafficking guns to Mexico’s vicious Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Texas prosecutors said Wednesday.
Jorge Alberto Morales-Calvo pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges that he and a cohort used a cartel broker to buy heavy-duty arms for the narcotraffickers — including a Barrett .50-caliber rifle and a FN Herstal Belgium 5.7X28 caliber pistol, the feds said.
“The Department of Justice is looking to hit the cartels from every angle and at every opportunity, which includes vigorously prosecuting not just the member of these terror groups, but those that enable them as well,” Nicholas Ganjei, US attorney for Southern Texas, said in a statement.
“Those that arm or otherwise empower the cartels are going to the meet the full force of the federal criminal justice system,” he said.
On the day the $16,000 deal was due to go down, Morales-Calvo waited in a car outside while co-defendant Homero Arteaga, 45, inspected the guns to complete the sale — when the feds moved in.
Prosecutors said the Mexican national tried to flee but didn’t make it out of the parking lot.
He pleaded guilty on Jan. 8 and was sentenced to three years and five months in federal prison this week — and will be turned over to immigration agents for deportation when he gets released.
Arteaga pleaded guilty on Nov. 21 and was sentenced earlier to nearly five years in prison.
“Trafficking firearms on behalf of violent cartels is not just illegal, it fuels deadly cycle of violence on both sides of the border,” said Special Agent in Charge Michael Weddel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“This case demonstrates how seriously we take these crimes and how we are using every tool and resource available to disrupt the illegal flow of weapons, dismantle cartel networks,” he said.
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