Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant 

 A cache of se­mi-au­to­mat­ic weapons and pis­tol mag­a­zines des­tined for T&T was dis­cov­ered stashed away in a tool­box, by of­fi­cials of the Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (USCBP) last Wednes­day in Puer­to Ri­co.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease post­ed on the USCBP web­site on Mon­day, the tool­box was sent via air couri­er from Ten­nessee to Port of Spain, Trinidad. The tool­box con­tained six se­mi-au­to­mat­ic pis­tols and nine pis­tol mag­a­zines.

Car­los Nieves, Port Di­rec­tor in Mayaguez-Aguadil­la, in the re­lease, not­ed that “The ex­por­ta­tion of firearms re­quires a li­cense in com­pli­ance with US Ex­port Con­trol reg­u­la­tions”.

“CBP of­fi­cers en­force US im­port and ex­port reg­u­la­tions to en­sure that prod­ucts en­ter­ing the sup­ply chain re­spect in­ter­na­tion­al trade agree­ments.”

The re­lease added that on Ju­ly 1, CBP of­fi­cers in­spect­ed out­bound parcels at the Rafael Her­nan­dez In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and was alert­ed by a USCBP K-9 to a box man­i­fest­ed as “Gift Ship­ment” with $100 cus­toms val­ue de­clared.

“A more in­tru­sive in­spec­tion re­vealed that the tool­box had six semi­au­to­mat­ic pis­tols and nine pis­tol mag­a­zines,” it stat­ed. 

“Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty In­ves­ti­ga­tions (HSI) took cus­tody of the weapons for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” it added.

Po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia that usu­al­ly when find­ings such as this oc­cur the In­ter­pol is called in for trac­ing of ad­dress­es both of the re­cip­i­ent and sender.

How­ev­er, when asked about the lat­est dis­cov­ery and if he was con­tact­ed on it, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, did not con­firm or de­ny.

Re­cent­ly, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence Grif­fith, how­ev­er, dis­closed that ac­cord­ing to in­tel­li­gence re­ceived il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion have been pen­e­trat­ing T&T's bor­ders through le­gal ports of en­tries. He added that be­cause of such in­tel­li­gence his of­fi­cers are need­ed to car­ry out thor­ough in­spec­tions of con­tain­ers and bar­rels be­fore leav­ing the re­spec­tive ports.

More In­fo

The U.S. De­part­ment of Com­merce’s Bu­reau of In­dus­try and Se­cu­ri­ty (BIS) ad­min­is­ters U.S. laws, reg­u­la­tions and poli­cies gov­ern­ing the ex­port and re-ex­port of com­modi­ties, soft­ware, and tech­nol­o­gy (col­lec­tive­ly “items”) falling un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Ex­port Ad­min­is­tra­tion Reg­u­la­tions (EAR). 

USCBP works with the BIS to im­ple­ment and en­force the EAR, which reg­u­lates the ex­port, re-ex­port, and trans­fer (in-coun­try) of items with com­mer­cial us­es that can al­so be used in con­ven­tion­al arms, weapons of mass de­struc­tion, ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties, or hu­man rights abus­es, and less sen­si­tive mil­i­tary items.    

With more than 60,000 em­ploy­ees, U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion, USCBP, is one of the world's largest law en­force­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions and is charged with keep­ing ter­ror­ists and their weapons out of the U.S. while fa­cil­i­tat­ing law­ful in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el and trade.

As the Unit­ed States’ first uni­fied bor­der en­ti­ty, USCBP takes a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to bor­der man­age­ment and con­trol, com­bin­ing cus­toms, im­mi­gra­tion, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, and agri­cul­tur­al pro­tec­tion in­to one co­or­di­nat­ed and sup­port­ive ac­tiv­i­ty.