Are Mexican Cartels Terrorist Organizations?Federal law offers a tool in the fight against cartels that Trump almost invoked before advisers convinced him to back down.
By Collin Pruett
March 9, 2022
Yulizsa Ramirez and Nohemí Medina Martinez left their home in El Paso, Texas, to visit relatives on the Mexican side of the city, Ciudad Juárez, on January 15, 2022. That afternoon was the last time they would say goodbye to their family. They were found the next morning, their bodies dismembered and stuffed inside of two black trash bags. The remains showed evidence of torture—at least the remains that were found. The women’s heads, arms, and legs provided enough evidence for Mexican officials to identify them. Most of their organs were missing. The Ramirezes were survived by their three adopted children, who now join the ranks of many millions of children who have survived the deaths of nearly 400,000 people in the decades-long cartel war being waged to America’s immediate south.
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Violence of this nature has prompted each of the last three U.S. presidents to consider the designation of cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C § 1189. The last consideration came directly from the Trump Oval Office in 2019, declared via tweet after cartel members opened fire on and murdered nine U.S. citizens driving south from Arizona to a wedding in the Mormon community of La Mora. The president’s advisers quickly moved to suppress Trump’s better instincts. Armed with a ludicrous Heritage Foundation study asserting cartel FTO designation would allow for asylum claims from “every continent except Antarctica,” they eventually dissuaded the president. Weeks later, offered concessions including cooperation on the now litigated “Remain in Mexico” policy from Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Trump relented on his tweet’s promise to “wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.”
In the face of this retreat, and as result of the Biden administration’s willful abandonment of enforcement, the U.S. border has endured a spike in illegal crossings, along with the violence and drugs accompanying it. Mexico reported a 2021 (routinely undercounted) homicide figure of an astounding 33,308—including 1,004 femicides. Just over 90,000 people are reported “missing” in Mexico as well, a euphemism for the unlocated victims of the cartels. Paired with the alarming new development of fentanyl trafficking, which inflicted the lion’s share of the United States’ 2021 record-shattering overdose count of 100,000, those numbers have led to renewed calls for the designation of cartels as FTOs. Senator Tom Cotton, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas congressman Chip Roy have each filed bills or written letters to the Biden administration in support of the move.
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A common refrain among drug-war detente advocates is that cartels seek monetary profit and their violence does not further political or social objectives. It’s a point that sounds reasonable to the disinterested observer in Washington but doesn’t stand proper scrutiny. Modern cartels control entire territorial swaths of Mexico, supplanting civil authorities. Recent estimates show that just over 20 percent of the nation is under the direct control and administration of various cartels, larger territory than Bangladesh or Greece. In these regions of the failed state, cartels assume the basic duties of governance abandoned by the defeated federales. Cartels pave roads, provide employment, and even promise security from rival gangs. Of course, threats to their consolidation of power are dealt with ruthlessly. More journalists are assassinated annually in Mexico than in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-mexican-cartels-terrorist-organizations/
