A report published on Sunday by the Colombian news program Noticias Caracol revealed how arms traffickers are recruiting young Colombians to ship concealed firearms sent from the United States to Colombia through courier delivery shipments.
The smuggled firearms, Noticias Caracol pointed out, end up in the hands of powerful terrorist organizations, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN).
The firearms reportedly travel to Colombia concealed inside electronic appliances such as televisions or speakers shipped from the United States and transported by courier services. Traffickers recruit young Colombians, promising them a small fee to receive the packages locally. The news program pointed out that the false shipments have led to many of the young men facing prison time or involved in extradition proceedings.
Caracol accompanied local law enforcement in two different operations leading to the capture of the recruited men and the retrieval of the smuggled firearms, thanks to information provided by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to Colombia’s Tax and Customs Police.
The first operation concluded with the arrest of a 23-year-old Colombian man who received a package containing a television with a concealed rifle purchased by a trafficker in the United States. The trafficker sent it to Bogotá through an unspecified courier company. Caracol Noticias stressed that the package turned the man’s life into a “living hell.” The television with the smuggled firearm inside was intended to be delivered to an apartment in the municipality of Yumbo, Valle del Cauca.
“When it left the airport, the driver of the van carrying the package did not know what it was carrying. However, several investigators tracked it down after being alerted that it was a military item prohibited for entry into national territory. The operation was carried out in coordination with the courier company,” Caracol Noticias explained. “At least eight intelligence agents guarded the vehicle, alerting it if it made any strange stops, since in these operations, they explained, there is a risk that the route could be changed or that someone could receive the order beforehand.”
“As soon as they arrived at the residential complex where they planned to deliver the television, the investigators got ready to intervene,” the report continued. “‘Let’s hold on because there are some points ahead and we don’t know who might be watching us,’ said the intelligence officer and head of the operation.”
Caracol Noticias detailed that the employees of the courier company entered the building and met the man who was to receive the package. The man asked the courier employees for help to bring the device up to the third floor where the apartment was located.
“At that moment, the agents ordered them to enter and broke the door of the residence,” Caracol said.
Colombian police officers asked the 23-year-old about the package he had just received from the United States. The man responded that the television set belonged to a “friend named Juan who, along with another friend, had paid him 300,000 Colombian pesos (roughly $71.50).” The man insisted that his “friends” had asked him for the favor since they supposedly “lived in a distant village and the delivery companies’ cars could not reach that place.”
Caracol Noticias stated that Colombian intelligence agents received another alert from the United States while they were reading the detained man’s rights. Days after the operation, Colombian agents tracked a shipped speaker device that arrived at Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport with the city of Medellín as its destination. The agents established that the device was to be picked up by a courier company that would take it to a warehouse, where a member of the organization would arrive to pick up the package.
The shipment was picked up by a 20-year-old man, who walked several blocks before being surrounded and caught by Colombian intelligence agents dressed in civilian clothes. Caracol explained that two other men, one of which was identified as a Puerto Rican national, were caught trying to flee the area after they saw the 20-year-old man being detained. Officials disassembled the speaker, finding a rifle disarmed the speaker, finding a rifle inside the device.
The arrested 20-year-old claimed that the two other detained men had summoned him the day before to a bakery in downtown Medellín and asked him to receive a package coming from the United States in exchange for 200,000 Colombian pesos ($48). The man claimed that he was unaware of what was in the package. Caracol Noticias reported that the concealed rifle was bought for about 100 million Colombian pesos (roughly $23,850) but that its price can be “tripled” in Colombia.
Colonel Yorguin Malagón, head of Colombia’s Tax and Customs Police, explained to Caracol Noticias that, since the seized weapons were purchased in the United States, the recruited “and apparently tricked by criminal gangs” young men could end up extradited.
“They look for people with scarce economic resources. They capture them and use them for a little money. In other cases, they look for people medically diagnosed as hopeless and they are the ones they are using to receive these packages,” Malagón said. “People are often unaware of what is inside what they are receiving.”
Colombian police authorities explained to Caracol Noticias that they have seized more than 8,000 firearms so far in 2025 at an average rate of one weapon every 20 minutes. Most of the seized firearms were destined for criminal organizations operating in the cities of Barranquilla, Cali, and Medellín.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here
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