ATF Fast and Furious Operation Lost Track of Weapons to Mexican Cartels

Operation Fast and Furious: When Federal Agents Deliberately Lost Track of Guns

In 2010, a Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry was killed near the Arizona-Mexico border. The two weapons found at the scene would lead to one of the most damaging scandals in law enforcement history—and expose how federal officials mishandled a controversial operation while covering up its failures.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had been running an operation called Fast and Furious, which was supposed to track gun trafficking from the United States to Mexican drug cartels. The stated goal was to build a case against major cartel operatives by following the supply chain. The method, however, was reckless: ATF agents deliberately allowed licensed gun dealers to sell weapons to straw purchasers—people buying guns on behalf of cartel members—without stopping the transactions.

What sounded like an undercover operation was actually something worse. Rather than covertly tracking these weapons, the ATF lost track of them. Hundreds of firearms, potentially over 2,000, were allowed to "walk" across the border with minimal or no surveillance. When agents couldn't account for the weapons, they simply hadn't been following them carefully enough.

Initial claims that this operation was reckless came from whistleblowers within the ATF itself, along with congressional investigators. They raised alarms starting in 2010. The response from ATF leadership and the Department of Justice was dismissive and defensive. Officials insisted the operation was sound, that procedures had been followed, and that the number of lost weapons was being exaggerated. Senior officials denied knowledge of the tactics or claimed they hadn't understood the full scope of what was happening on the ground.

The evidence that proved these claims true came through congressional testimony, internal ATF emails, and investigative reporting. In 2011, congressional committees began reviewing documents that showed ATF supervisors had explicitly approved the practice of allowing guns to walk. These weren't accidents or oversight—they were deliberate policy decisions made by officials who believed the intelligence gathered would justify the risk. One weapon recovered at Brian Terry's murder scene could be traced directly to Fast and Furious. Later investigations confirmed that multiple weapons used in cartel violence across Mexico and at least two more U.S. law enforcement deaths were connected to the operation.