Mohawk Territory Exploited in Transnational Firearms-Trafficking Case, U.S. Indictment Says

AKWESASNE – A federal indictment unsealed in New Hampshire reads like a logistics manual for exploiting cartel-saturated borderlands.

But it is the northern border — the trilateral seam between Canadian, American, and Mohawk lands — and not notorious southern crossings like Laredo or San Diego, that is now drawing increased focus from United States weapons-trafficking agencies.

From the summer of 2021 through at least October 2024, according to court documents, a network of straw buyers fanned out across gun dealerships in Keene, New Hampshire, and Dummerston, Vermont, buying weapons on behalf of gangsters who could not legally acquire them.

Those firearms were then moved north through New York State and funneled across the international border through the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation — a territory that straddles the St. Lawrence River and has long been identified by law enforcement as one of the most strategically exploited smuggling corridors in North America.

As The Bureau has previously reported, the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation commands a geography that makes it uniquely vulnerable, and uniquely important, to Mexican cartel networks now working alongside Chinese transnational crime and an explosion of domestic gangs operating across Indigenous lands in Canada. The Mohawk reserve straddles two countries, two provinces, and one American state. More than one hundred and thirty thousand commuters pass through nearby First Nation territory to access Montreal.

At times, the Montreal Gazette has reported, the Akwesasne gun smugglers crossed the river on jet skis.