Mexico Wants to Meet With State Dept. After Trump Said U.S. Will Designate Drug Cartels as Terrorists
“They will be designated … I have been working on that for the last 90 days.”
President Donald Trump told Bill O’Reilly he wants the U.S. to designate the Mexican drug cartels as terrorists. It comes weeks after drug cartels killed nine Americans, including six children, in northern Mexico.
His decision pushed Mexican officials to announce they want to meet with the State Department to discuss the designation.
From Reuters:
“They will be designated … I have been working on that for the last 90 days. You know, designation is not that easy, you have to go through a process, and we are well into that process,” Trump said in an interview aired on Tuesday with conservative media personality Bill O’Reilly.
Trump justified his position because America is “losing 100,000 people a year to what is happening and what is coming through from on Mexico.” He also stressed that these cartels “have unlimited money” since “it is drug money and human trafficking money.”
The designation appears to have tied the hands of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador:
Soon afterwards, Mexico’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it would quickly seek a high-level meeting with U.S. State Department officials to address the legal designation as well as the flow of arms and money to organized crime.
“The foreign minister will establish contact with his counterpart, Michael R. Pompeo, in order to discuss this very important issue for the bilateral agenda,” the ministry said.
Ebrard insisted the State Department does “not need to designate or classify a specific group as terrorist so that” the two countries can “act together against it.
After the murder, Trump offered help to the Mexican government to eliminate the drug cartel “monsters.”
López Obrador began his presidential administration by swearing the drug war over in Mexico. Unfortunately, the “murder rate has hit record highs this year.” People have said the president’s situation has not worked.
López Obrador described it as “a regrettable situation.” He also said Mexico doesn’t “need intervention.”
He added that Mexico already “declared war, and it didn’t work.” Therefore it “is not an option.”
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Comments
Obrador doesn’t want to lose a significant amount of income if he can’t get the president to stop the designation, which he won’t.
Sadly, Obrador has now revealed that he is nothing but a bought and paid for lapdog of the Cartels. The Cartels run Mexico now, the “Government” is just window dressing, and a financial clearinghouse for the Cartels transactions.
that’s a very broad statement. Would you please provide evidence to support your claim.
He just did. Circumstantial evidence is admissible, don’t you know?
Commenters demanding long legal briefs for internet rebuttal comments are ridiculous.Are drugs a problem? Are illegal aliens a problem? Isn’t it Trump’s job to seek a solution to international problems? We elected him to do the job everyone else failed to do.
The cartels and much of the government are one and the same. Mexico is inches from being a failed state. They are stopped a bit like ISIS would be, choke off money and replace with non stop lead.
Inches.. The Mexican Government has already failed!
If the government has failed, as you stated, why are people not in the streets demanding US intervention? If the government has failed, no one has told the Mexican people nor their institutions. The public hospitals are open and functioning, taxes are collected, infrastructure is being built at a much faster rate than in the US, thousand of tourists visit daily, thousands of Americans cross into Mexico daily without incident, and so forth. Where is the failure?
I’m a frequent critic of the attitudes expressed toward Mexico in the LI comments sections, but I don’t take kindly, either, to commenters like you who deny how dire the situation really is there. Some examples of your economical use of the truth …
If the government has failed, no one has told the Mexican people nor their institutions.
Balderdash. I follow events in Mexico closely, especially those that occur on its border with Guatemala. The concern that Mexico is a failed state is mentioned in newspapers there almost daily, especially since the narcos, through a coordinated, regional use of heavy firepower, forced the gov’t to free the son of El Chapo Guzmán (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50092641).
The public hospitals are open and functioning…
Yes, and the doctors and nurses there take to the streets to protest that they have to work without the necessary pharmaceuticals, and sometimes without even having rubber gloves. (https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/mexico/sociedad/amlo-reconoce-el-desabasto-de-medicamentos-en-hospitales-de-chiapas-salud-imss-3954869.html)
…infrastructure is being built at a much faster rate than in the US
That’s small comfort to the truckers and bus drivers (not to mention passengers) whose vehicles are being attacked and destroyed even on Federal highways (https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/republica/sociedad/sujetos-armados-incendian-camiones-en-carretera-acapulco-zihuatanejo-petatlan-4427986.html).
Tourists visit Iran every day.
The question isn’t why is he doing this, rather why didn’t Obama or Bush do it first?
Attention is hyper fixated on Mexico, but the cartels run the circuit on all countries south of the border.
An even gutsier and more effective move would be to cut off demand and mandate indefinite prison time and rehab for customers.
The cartels dropped the price of the deadlier and more addictive drugs after pot became legalized.
Honestly I see a high correlation (and causation) to deregulating liquor sales and legalizing pot to the homeless/addict crisis on the left coast.
Gutsy would be to regulate and tax street drugs. Bust sellers for licensing and tax violations, fine users for purchasing from an unlicensed source rather than imprisoning them just for buying something You don’t think they should have because you think it MIGHT lead them to criminal activity.
This will only work if we DO punish crime, especially the petty crimes junkies commit to get their fix. Otherwise we are going to get more of the homeless/junkie camps that are now swamping the left coast cities.
Many or most will use responsibly and moderately, but those that can’t or won’t cannot be allowed to trash our streets while pilfering everything that isn’t nailed down. Fining them won’t cut it, because they won’t pay the fines and eventually end up in jail on bench warrants and the revolving doors just keep spinning.
Actually, jail is their goal in the winter, where 3 hots and a cot are provided. It is supposed to hit 20 at night in PDX so there will be a long line at the Hooper detox center. They aren’t so motivated when it is nice out and they can park their butts on the sidwalk with a 24 of Steel Reserve 12% malt liquor.
i knew a guy in Barstow who said the police refused to arrest him when all he wanted was a warm clean place to sleep.
Maybe Americans should just quit using drugs from Mexico….
The “War on Drugs” wasn’t aware at all.
A War on Drugs would involve dropping the US Marines off down in S America and telling them that there’s beer waiting for them in Texas. Three months and every single cartel would be eliminated.
Seriously, though, the production necessary for the quantities they sell requires massive infrastructure. That infrastructure is immobile, easily identified, and can be obliterated. The cartels hide behind the local government… we don’t need to go in to build nations or anything, just destroy the cartel’s infrastructure.
Aware = a war.
Stupid autocorrect
Mexico is terrified of having the drug cartels designated as terrorist organizations. The reason for this, is because, under international agreements, such a designation would actually allow the US to enter Mexico and physically attack the cartel interests, without the agreement of the the Mexican government. And, this would be a political disaster for the current Mexican government.
Even worse, it could also result in Mexico losing its ‘safe country’ designation which would force open our borders to immigration again.
…under international agreements, such a designation would actually allow the US to enter Mexico and physically attack the cartel interest…
You (Mac45) usually know whereof you speak, so could you tell us to which international agreement you’re referring? The existence of an international agreement that allows Country A to launch attacks within Country B based upon Country A’s own unilateral determination seems strange.
There is no single overarching international agreement which specifically allows for the unwanted intervention by one nation into the territory of another, without that country’s consent, to engage an third-party which has engaged in attacks upon the assets or citizens of the first nation. What we have is an expanding concept, under Chapter VII Article 51 of the UN charter, which allows such intervention under the “unwilling and unable test” in national self defense. The US has embraced this legal concept wholeheartedly and has used it on several occasions. Here is a couple of links to an explanation of that concept, as well as the nations supporting it:
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1134709/FULLTEXT02.pdf
https://www.lawfareblog.com/which-states-support-unwilling-and-unable-test
Drug cartels are Mexico’s swamp establishment.
Just like our swamp in the US, they need to be taken out by any means possible.
the ” war on drugs ” has been in progress for over fifty years now–what particular phase the ” war ” is in has always been open to interpretation–given the fundamental motivation for the whole business(addiction),would venture to say that it will never indeed be ” won ” entirely
surgical strikes under whatever guise(regardless whether known or unknown to Mexico)would have(and have had)limited success only
would seem more practical(and less costly in human lives)to SECURE our border–certainly our lawful right by any measure and counteracting a lot(but realistically not all)of the drugs flowing into our country as well as the flow of ” immigrants ” arriving daily