The Trump Administration sees very clearly the true nature of the cartels’ increasing threat to our sovereignty and security. Among his first actions as President, Donald Trump signed an executive order designating Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
Shortly after, the White House highlighted the cartel’s collusion with the Mexican Government and stated that “The Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico.” The Mexican narco-state nexus runs alarmingly deep and has been explained at length by my colleague Joshua Treviño.
The FTO designation and the Mexican state-cartel alliance statement is indicative that our leaders are assertively leaving behind the “somnolent Biden regime, (and) US policy is awakening to reality.”
This leaves the Mexican government with an immediate existential choice to make; either partner with the United States or remain the narco-state puppet of cartels threatening American sovereignty and face the consequences.
The State Department, under the direction of Secretary Marco Rubio, is placing pressure with a magnifying glass by clarifying which organizations this order will apply.
In Mexico, the State Department has plans to designate the Sinaloa Cartel, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), the Northeast Cartel (Cartel de Noreste, or CDN), the Michoacan family and the United cartels.
These foreign terrorist organizations operate from El Paso to Brownsville, plunging all Texas border communities in the terror enterprise. Their criminal engagements are present throughout the state and established in every major city of Texas.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation has long championed these measures, and is grateful to President Trump and his administration for the clear-sightedness. But not everyone sees it that way.
“The foreign terrorist organization designation should not be taken lightly,” says Gary Hale, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
They’re not being taken lightly.
The cartels fit the definition of terrorism, both domestically and internationally. However, distinct from conventional terrorist networks such as ISIS or Al Qaeda, the cartel’s motivations are business oriented as well as political. They inflict terror as means to expedite their enterprises. The frequent use of terror tactics is systemic to their operations—part-and-parcel of their criminal enterprises of drug smuggling and human trafficking.
What has allowed the cartels to continue their reign of violence and terror? It’s the absence of law enforcement by the Mexican government, due to behind-the-scenes collusion and high-level corruption. The Texas Public Policy Foundation has demonstrated that there is a Mexican state-cartel alliance. There is a growing sentiment that the Mexican government and the Morena party are complicit in the activities of the Sinaloa cartel—a cartel whose empire is experiencing a civil war between the Chapitos and the Mayitos.
We should bear in mind, however, regional and commercial differences between the various cartels. And those differences influence how each threat should be handled.
At the southwest border of Texas, La Linea, a cartel associated with CJNG, has been running the state of Chihuahua’s region near El Paso, where mass graves attributed to them were recently discovered. La Linea’s proximity to El Paso has made it a big contributor to the lethal fentanyl crisis in the United States. It controls “access to border crossings, imposing fees on networks that move drugs or people through the area.”
At the southeast border of Texas, the Cartel del Noreste in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas have been inflicting terror via IEDs. Last week. the U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo issued a security alert for U.S. government personnel to shelter in place as the city declared an emergency situation. The U.S. State Department responded with a Security Alert of Do Not Travel due to Crime and Kidnapping.
These escalations of violence at the border, along with pressure from Washington to halt drug trafficking, were part of the consideration that ultimately led President Scheinbaum to commit 10,000 Mexican troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. Civilians on both sides of the border are increasingly concerned with the encroaching terrorist cartels.
Americans want our law enforcement agencies to these threats. And the consensus grows in proportion to proximity to the situation. In a recent poll, Texans spoke strongly in favor of creating a state border security agency. The strongest support came from rural (76%) and Hispanic (71%) voters.
One mechanism for securing our border Congress could enact is found in legislation bolstering the 287(g) program. The “agreements under Section 287(g) require the local law enforcement officers to receive appropriate training and to function under the supervision of ICE officers.”
In the same vein, establishing a Texas list of corrupt Mexican actors would strengthen our sovereignty by preventing their corruption from spreading its roots into our state. The U.S. precedent for Texas to build upon for this exists in the Engel list. Such a list would name Mexican government officials with corrupt links to cartels.
The implementation of this list would have prevented the recent Duarte fiasco. César Horacio Duarte Jáquez, former governor of Chihuahua, “fled to El Paso after a corruption investigation into his administration revealed his multimillion-dollar embezzlement of public funds. He was a fugitive in the U.S. for three years until his arrest.”
Empirically and anecdotally, we have heard countless Texans call for greater efforts to secure our border and strengthen our sovereignty. Now, the momentum is beginning to move in the right direction. President Trump’s FTO designation, recent clarification, and mobilization of law enforcement is rooted in this call for security.