What free stuff?
Maybe he did "take a wrong turn", and the guns were registered in his name in California.
But if Juan Jose Hidalgo "made a wrong turn" and "accidentally" smuggled weapons from Tijuana into San Diego (or drugs or anything else illegal in the country in which he was captured), I think you'd have a different opinion.
If the facts were the same as in this one I would not.
Guy drove through the American side which is easy to do. They are not stopping you and there is no checkpoint. You pass through it and there is no "turnaround" if you fucked up. You have to finish going through the Mexican check point before there is any hope of turning around. When he realized what had happened he declared the firearms to the Mexican authorities. They decided to handle it with malice and the United States government decided to not handle it at all.
Pieces of shit. Every last one of them!