Val Verde Man Sentenced to 7 Years for Trafficking Firearms to Mexico

A federal court in Del Rio handed a seven-year prison sentence to a 42-year-old Mexican national who orchestrated a firearms trafficking operation that funneled 36 guns from San Antonio retail stores across the border at Eagle Pass into Mexico.

Martin Edgar Garza Pacheco, of Melchor Múzquiz, Coahuila, pleaded guilty on August 21, 2023, to one count of conspiracy to traffic firearms from the United States into Mexico. Chief U.S. District Judge Alia Moses sentenced him to 84 months in federal prison.

Court documents lay out a methodical operation. Garza Pacheco recruited two co-conspirators, Shiddartha Salinas Avila and Victor Ulysses Ybarra-Daniels, to walk into retail stores around San Antonio and purchase the weapons on his behalf. Garza Pacheco would then drive north through the Eagle Pass Port of Entry, collect the firearms, and transport them back into Mexico in his vehicle. Authorities arrested him at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry on April 22, 2023, ending a scheme that had drawn the attention of federal investigators across multiple agencies.

Both co-conspirators have since been sentenced in Del Rio as well. Ybarra-Daniels received a 48-month federal prison term on October 8, and Salinas Avila was sentenced to 42 months on November 3, 2025.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives led the investigation alongside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations division and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nallely Duarte and Daisy Gonzalez prosecuted the case for the Western District of Texas.

The Garza Pacheco sentencing is one of several recent federal firearms trafficking convictions tied to the Texas-Mexico border corridor. In a separate case out of Laredo, Jesus Guadalupe Covarrubias, 40, an alleged member of the Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos gang, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for directing a straw-purchasing scheme that funneled at least 50 firearms to a Mexican cartel between 2018 and 2021. Covarrubias, a convicted felon, used family members to buy the guns and later filed a false theft report claiming 30 rifles had been stolen from his ranch; authorities found inconsistencies in his account and determined 23 of those weapons, including a $10,000 .50-caliber rifle, could not be located. He fled to Mexico after his 2021 arrest and was returned to the United States in February 2025. That investigation was led by ATF with assistance from the Webb County Sheriff's Office and the Laredo Police Department.