LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- A tattoo shop in Las Cruces helps federal authorities get guns and drugs off the streets -- guns that were expected to go to Mexican drug cartels.

The tattoo shop was set up nine months ago on Solano Avenue by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to attract people who were looking to get rid of their guns.

Las Cruces has not been a small town for many years. It has been a painful evolution into a fairly major metropolitan area,” said Deputy Chief Pete Bradley with the Las Cruces Police Department.

That evolution has brought the ATF’s undercover agents to Las Cruces.

“It was not known to anyone that they are anything other than business managers and business owners that employed the tattoo artist and body piercing assistant,” said George Gillett, ATF special agent in charge.

The guns being sold could have had a future with drug trafficking organizations or cartels.

“These are guns that were sold to undercover agents who spun tales about diverting them to Mexico to be used by drug trafficking organizations or to be used in other criminal enterprise and acts,” Gillett said.

“The ball is now turned over to the prosecutors both in my office and in the district attorney's office. We now have to present these cases in court,” said Greg Wormuth, U.S. Attorney’s Office Branch Chief.

In all about 30 people were arrested and indicted since Tuesday on federal charges of felony possession of firearms, transfer of stolen firearms, or distribution of narcotics.

“If we can circumvent that weapon from being sold to an actual to an actual DTO by purchasing it ourselves, I think that's a fantastic idea,” Gillett said.

ATF got the help of local law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Marshal’s office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Border Enforcement Task Force Teams.

The agencies said Las Cruces is now a much safer place than it was just nine months ago.

“This operation has made our community safer and it has also staunched the flow of firearms that head to violent Mexican drug cartels,” Wormuth said.

One pipe bomb was even sold to undercover agents with the falsified purpose of being used on a competing business in town.