U.S. Supreme Court to hear Mexico's gun suit
March 3, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments, tomorrow, in a case brought by Mexico, which is pursuing a legal strategy to hold U.S. gun manufacturers and sellers accountable for arming criminal cartels in Mexico. The case, Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, accuses seven U.S. gunmakers of knowingly aiding and abetting illegal firearm sales to gun traffickers.
The case reverses longstanding complaints by U.S. President Donald Trump that Mexican cartels have contributed to rising violence in the United States. “Instead, Mexico argues the majority of guns found at Mexican crime scenes come from the United States. It seeks some $10 billion in damages from U.S. gun makers,” reports the New York Times.
“For years, Mexico’s drug cartels have obtained most of their guns from the United States, according to U.S. and Mexican officials, in what anti-violence activists refer to as an “Iron River” of weapons,” reports the Washington Post.
The Mexican government’s complaint states that a tenfold increase in gun-related homicides in the country coincided with the expiration of the U.S. assault weapons ban in 2004 and an increase in U.S. gun production that began in 2005.
Hundreds of thousands of weapons − made by the manufacturers Mexico is suing − are trafficked annually over the border. Mexico says gun makers are designing and marketing weapons to appeal to cartels – including Colt’s special-edition handguns like the Super “El Jefe” pistol, a term used to refer to cartel bosses, and a pistol named after the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, reports U.S. News and World Report.
“If Mexico wins the lawsuit to hold gun manufacturers accountable, the subsequent public safety gains in Mexico will also advance U.S. interests. However, the more likely outcome is that this far-right Supreme Court majority will say Mexico’s complaint is not sufficient to overcome the unique protections from civil liability Congress granted the firearm industry at the urging of the corporate gun lobby,” according to the Center for American Progress.
The case arrives at the Supreme Court against a backdrop of strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mexico, on the same day the U.S. Trump administration has threatened to slap 25 percent tariffs on Mexican imports.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has gone on the offensive against criminal groups — a strategy which is actually weakening cartels, reports the New York Times.
“Criminal organizations in Mexico have a long history of surviving efforts to dismantle them, or simply splintering off into new groups. But several operatives said that for the first time in years, they genuinely feared arrest or death at the hands of the authorities.”
Nonetheless, Mexico’s efforts to stop fentanyl at the border are far less effective than their U.S. counterparts, results that demonstrate “the difficulty of finding the opioid — especially for a country with a weak, underfunded security structure,” reports the Washington Post.
More Mexico-U.S.
U.S. commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said yesterday that U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico will go into effect on Tuesday, but the president would determine whether to stick with the planned 25% level. (Reuters)
Migration
The ACLU sued the U.S. Trump administration Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 undocumented immigrants detained in the U.S. to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, their second legal challenge in less than a month over plans to hold up to 30,000 people there for deportation, reports the Associated Press.
A group of high-profile lawyers filed a suit against Panama over its detention of migrants deported from the United States. The case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, names 10 Iranian Christian converts and 102 migrants detained at a camp near a jungle in Panama as plaintiffs, reports the New York Times.
The cases of the 112 deportees in the remote Panamanian jungle camp “point to the tension between the Trump administration’s aims of expelling vast numbers of migrants and the limits of Latin American countries working to facilitate those ambitions — under enormous pressure from President Trump,” reports the New York Times.
Panama is the testing ground for the broader “deportation diplomacy,” blitz being carried out by Trump, who is strong arming Central American nations into taking deportees from other countries, I write in Cenital.
Costa Rica and Panama have so far denied press access to facilities where they are holding migrants. Panama had initially invited journalists to the Darien this week, but ultimately canceled the visit.“ Panama cannot end up becoming a black hole for deported migrants,” Juan Pappier, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in the Americas, told the Associated Press. “Migrants have the right to communicate with their families, to seek lawyers and Panama must guarantee transparency about the situation in which they find themselves.”
“The presidents of Panama and Costa Rica have portrayed the arrival of the deportees as only temporary. But if the numbers grow and the stays become prolonged, they and other leaders who implement the bridge agreements could be forced to make a difficult calculation between staying in the good graces of Trump while avoiding domestic backlash,” reports the Guardian.
Panama is working to formalize the recent trend in southbound, reverse migration through maritime migration channels from Panama to northern Colombia via the Caribbean Sea, writes Jordi Amaral in the Americas Migration Brief.
Regional Relations
Honduras’ government said it had begun the process of extraditing to the United States an undocumented immigrant who was accused of killing a young Iowa woman in 2016, a case that Trump made a focal point in his first presidential campaign. It is another example of how countries in the region are scrambling to demonstrate willingness to cooperate with the Trump administration, reports the New York Times.
While the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine is generating short-term results, it runs the risk of creating destabilizing backlash in the region and pushing Latin America and the Caribbean towards alternate great powers, I write in Le Monde Diplomatique, looking at the realist calculations that informed Jimmy Carter’s Panama Canal agreements in 1977.
In Cenital, Juan Gabriel Tokatlian evaluates what a revamped Monroe Doctrine means in the current context, analyzing the U.S.’s military, economic, and cultural power in its “backyard.”
Guyanese President Irfaan Ali said on Saturday that a Venezuelan coast guard patrol entered Guyanese waters earlier in the day, approaching an output vessel in an offshore oil block managed by Exxon Mobil, breaching international maritime agreements, reports Reuters. He deployed securifty forces and triggered diplomatic action, reports the Guardian.
More Mexico
In April, Sheinbaum is expected to unveil a five-year national development plan outlining her education initiatives and priorities, among other issues — experts are watching closely to see if she continues a shift away from her predecessor’s policies, reports Americas Quarterly.
Culture Corner
I’m Still Here won the Oscar for best international film at the Academy Awards, —it is the first Brazilian film to win the award, and was also the first to be nominated, reports the Guardian.