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.
As part of his guilty plea, the man admitted to paying $300 to each individual who would buy the guns for him as a way to bypass U.S. laws that prohibit him from buying them himself. Federal prosecutors claim that at least 13 other weapons were purchased or were in the process of being bought for Leal.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.