DACA Recipient Sent to U.S. Prison for Buying Guns for Mexican Cartels
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A Mexican national living in the U.S. under the protection of an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will be spending more than eight years in prison for leading a straw purchasing ring that supplied firearms to cartel members in Mexico. This week, 22-year-old Mario Elier Leal went before Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane for a sentencing hearing at a federal courthouse in McAllen. Texas. Leal previously pleaded guilty to straw purchasing charges in 2024. During the hearing, Judge Crane sentenced Leal to 97 months in federal prison. According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, since Leal is not a U.S. citizen, he will face a deportation process once he completes his sentence. Leal was in the country under the DACA program, meaning that he had been brought illegally into the country as a child but had since been allowed to stay. According to federal prosecutors, Leal had recruited other individuals to purchase AK-47-type rifles in South Texas that would then be smuggled into Mexico. At the time of his arrest, authorities seized three AK-47 rifles that Leal obtained using two other young men who were U.S citizens and could legally buy weapons in Texas. Court documents do not specify the cartel for which the guns were purchased. However, just south of McAllen is the area controlled by the Gulf Cartel. We see Mexico sue US Gun Manufacturers for US weapons being smuggled across the border to the cartels, only to find out that the smugglers were their own citizens, one that was permitted to stay in the country by Obama's DACA program.

DACA Recipient Sent to U.S. Prison for Buying Guns for Mexican Cartels
A Mexican national living in the U.S. under the protection of an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will be spending more than eight years in prison for leading a straw purchasing ring that supplied firearms to cartel members in Mexico. | Border / Cartel...
