U.S. Reps. Dr. Mark Green (R-TN-07) and Chip Roy (R-TX-21) announced they will lead a group of House Republicans on sending a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to ask that drug cartels using terrorist tactics be labeled as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
A copy of the letter is available here.
Green served on tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan during the War on Terror.
Green and Roy said, in a press release, that their purposes for asking for a terrorist designation are:
• To make it unlawful for any person who knowingly provides “material support or resources” to the cartel to enter the United States.
• To prevent any member of a designated drug cartel from legally entering the United States.
• To allow the Secretary of the Treasury to block all assets possessed or controlled by the drug cartels.
• To further stigmatize these groups both at home and abroad.
The U.N.’s Security Council has previously acknowledged the link between drug trafficking and terrorism, the congressmen said.
Green said, “These cartels have utilized barbaric tactics including those adopted by ISIS and al Qaeda – murdering and torturing innocents, destabilizing countries and assassinating members of law enforcement. Moreover, they threaten our homeland security. Our communities suffer from the powerful and dangerous drugs cartels make available to our citizens. Fentanyl and heroin overdoses have taken thousands of lives.”
Roy added, “Cartels are the problem and it is time we started acting like it. These cartels undermine our national security with a relentless attack on our border while trafficking in human beings and dangerous narcotics. Cartels are endangering American citizens, our Mexican neighbors, and the migrants who seek to come here. I am proud to join my friend Rep. Mark Green to urge the State Department to consider designating them as a Foreign Terror Organization.”
Brandon Darby is director of Breitbart’s Border and Cartel Chronicles projects. He sent a series of six tweets last week about the cartel problem. The first tweet said, “1. Both the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel and CDN of Los Zetas long ago crossed the line from being drug cartels to being terror groups. They directly use acts of terror to obtain and hold complete control over every facet of society in the territories they control.”
https://twitter.com/brandondarby/status/1095823817052774400
A Breitbart story highlighted comments Darby made on a recent interview on Breitbart News Tonight. The interview is available here. Darby spoke about the Gulf Cartel and its Reynosa faction.
About Reynosa, Darby said:
“It is the worst faction of the Gulf Cartel and it is the faction of the Gulf Cartel and the only faction of any Mexican cartel that makes as much or more money from smuggling potential asylees to the border and other people who want to enter illegally. They make as much or more from illegal immigration as they do from narcotics.”
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
We have been fighting this “war on drugs” since Nixon coined the phrase in 1971, with no real end in sight. Could it be that US leadership, up until now, really doesn’t want to win it? Instead they want to “lock up” our kids caught up in the consumer end of the business. Send a JDAM or a couple of AGM114’s down the chimneys of the drug kingpin villas and I bet there will be a change of atitude! I’d also bet it might greatly reduce human trafficing too!
I agree with your supposition that “our kids are caught up in the consumer end of the business” but let’s really face the facts here. If there were no consumers then there would be no drug sales. They are responsible for their consumption and should be penalized accordingly as should the suppliers be penalized as well.