The Washington Times ran my piece on designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organization.
In an interview with Bill O’Reilly, President Trump stated that he planned to designate the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
His comment was in response to the brutal murder of nine American citizens in Mexico last month. The murder victims included women and children.
“A wonderful family and friends from Utah got caught between two vicious drug cartels, who were shooting at each other, with the result being many great American people killed, including young children, and some missing,” Mr. Trump tweeted following the murders.
“If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively. The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”
Retired Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Jack Riley, the author of “Drug Warrior: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo and the Rise of the Opioid Crisis,” approved of Mr. Trump’s idea of designating the cartels as terrorists.
“This is something that myself and others have been advocating for a number of years. I think I even discussed this during my congressional testimony in 2016,” Mr. Riley said in an interview on NPR.
“I think it’s a game changer. Clearly, the cartels, with their financial backing and the death and misery that they’ve caused both in Mexico and United States, at least in my opinion, meet the threshold as a terrorist organization. And I think this shows real leadership on the part of the president. I commend him. And I hope we can get it done because it’s a game changer.”
Last week I spoke to Javier Pena and Steve Murphy, the two retired DEA special agents who took down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and they too supported the idea of designing the cartels as terrorists.
“They are terrorist organizations to me. They’re killing, they’re corrupting, and they’re intimidating.” Mr. Pena said. “We see the violence, such as the recent massacres in Mexico. If we name them terrorist organizations, maybe we’ll get a lot more support from a lot of other people.”
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