A gunsmith from a rural town, a former Marine, and half a dozen others were under investigation in San Antonio, Texas, starting in the summer of 2018 for trafficking more than half a million dollars worth of guns and ammunition to the Cartel del Noreste, a drug cartel prominent in northeast Mexico with connections to former Mexican soldiers.
Jose J. Soto Jr. was in the U.S. Armed Forces from 2004 to 2015, including a stint with the elite Army Rangers. He came on Homeland Security Investigations’ radar around 2017 for working with a human trafficker and gunrunner for the cartel.
