A Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al has plead­ed guilty in the Unit­ed States to con­spir­ing to smug­gle firearms in­to this coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the U.S. Em­bassy in Port of Spain, 35-year-old Shem Wayne Alexan­der faces up to five years in fed­er­al prison. He was ar­rest­ed in Ja­maica on No­vem­ber 15th, 2024, un­der a U.S. pro­vi­sion­al ar­rest re­quest, and ex­tra­dit­ed to the U.S. the fol­low­ing month.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said that be­tween April 2019 and April 2022, Alexan­der and his as­so­ciates ex­port­ed firearms, com­po­nents, and am­mu­ni­tion from Flori­da to Trinidad and To­ba­go. On April 21st, 2021, of­fi­cers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and Cus­toms and Ex­cise seized a ship­ment at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port con­tain­ing two punch­ing bags filled with pis­tols, re­volvers, a shot­gun, AR-15 parts, mag­a­zines, and hun­dreds of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

The U.S. Em­bassy said co­op­er­a­tion be­tween agen­cies in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica, and the Unit­ed States was crit­i­cal to Alexan­der’s ar­rest and ex­tra­di­tion.

Chargé d’Af­faires Char­lie J. Fran­ta III said il­le­gal firearms traf­fick­ing fu­els vi­o­lence and un­der­mines re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, adding that the case demon­strates the com­mit­ment of all three na­tions to dis­man­tling transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works.