After massacre, some lawmakers say US should designate cartels terrorist organizations

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — After the murders of nine family members with dual United States-Mexico citizenship by drug cartel gunmen on a road between Sonora and Chihuahua Monday, President Donald Trump and members of Congress are weighing options to step up America’s role in Mexico’s drug war, including possibly treating the cartels like terrorist organizations.

The assault left three women and six children dead and several others injured. Mexican authorities were unsure whether the killings were a case of mistaken identity or an attempt to target members of a family that has clashed with cartels before. Whatever the reason, the horrific violence against American citizens stirred outrage and calls for action in Washington.

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“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth,” President Trump said on Twitter Tuesday.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rebuffed that offer, citing failures of past joint military efforts with the U.S.

“It’s unfortunate, sad, because children died. This is painful,” López Obrador said at a news conference Wednesday, according to The Washington Post. “But trying to resolve this problem by declaring a war? In our country, it’s been shown that this doesn’t work. This was a disaster.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told reporters on Capitol Hill that Trump was right to call on Mexico to “knuckle down” and go after the cartels.

“What’s happening along the border with regard to these cartels and the increasing levels of violence is a real concern to us and, I think, to the Mexican government,” Romney said. “This is something Mexico’s been working on for a long, long time and there’s still a problem and it’s getting worse.”

Cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico is central to that effort, according to Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and he argued President Trump’s policies and rhetoric had strained that relationship.

“In the last three years, that has really ground to a halt,” Heinrich said. “We’ve lost a lot of progress there. That’s disappointing.”

Experts say Lopez Obrador’s rejection of Trump’s assistance is unsurprising. He ran for office on a “hugs, not bullets” approach to drug control, and previous American interventions in Latin America are not remembered fondly in the region.

“It’s a very sensitive topic,” said Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis for global intelligence firm Stratfor. “It’s going to be seen as offensive by many Mexicans and kind of patronizing.”

Given his campaign promise not to continue the militarized war on drugs, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University and a non-resident scholar at the Baker Institute’s Center for the United States and Mexico, Lopez Obrador’s supporters would want him to distance himself from Trump, despite recent incidents of high-profile cartel violence.

“With his rhetoric, he tries not to appear as the president who’s going to collaborate in terms of security with the United States,” Correa-Cabrera said.

While many on Congress have been critical of Lopez Obrador for his less aggressive approach to the drug war, Maureen Meyer, director for Mexico and migrant rights at the Washington Office on Latin America, stressed the strategies employed by previous administrations also failed to stem the rising tide of drug-related violence.

“These are long-standing issues in Mexico Lopez Obrador has inherited from his predecessors,” Meyer said.

The killings this week followed other recent incidents of violence that underscored the threat posed by drug cartels. As Mexico’s homicide rate hits record levels, more than a dozen police officers were ambushed and killed by gunmen in the state of Michoacan last month.

The following week, cartel forces launched a siege against the city of Culiacán to force the government to release Ovidio Guzman Lopez—the son of convicted kingpin Joaquin Guzman, also known as El Chapo—taking control of the streets and blocking access to the airport.

One option being floated in Congress to mount a more direct challenge to the cartels, with or without support from Lopez Obrador, is formally designating certain drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. To do this, the secretary of state must determine a group:

• Is a foreign organization
• Engages in or has the capability and intent to engage in terrorism
• Threatens the security of U.S. nationals, national defense, foreign relations, or economic interests

“Terrorism,” as defined by the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, is premeditated, politically-motivated violence committed against non-combatants by subnational actors. Once an organization is branded as an FTO, it becomes illegal for persons in the U.S. to provide it with material support or resources, members of the group can be barred from entry to the country, and the Treasury Department can require U.S. financial institutions to block all transactions involving the organization.

President Trump said earlier this year he was “very seriously” considering the idea.

“Mexico, unfortunately, has lost control of the cartels,” he told Breitbart in March. “They’ve totally lost control of the cartels.”

The prospect of declaring drug cartels FTOs has been gaining momentum among the president’s supporters. Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Mark Green, R-Tenn., introduced a bill in the House earlier this year that would direct the secretary of state to designate three cartel factions as terrorist organizations.

“239. That is the number of days it has been since I introduced legislation to designate Mexican drug cartels ‘Foreign Terrorist Organizations,’” Roy said on Twitter Wednesday. “How many stories do we need to hear about cartels brutally murdering innocent ppl before we do something about it? Apparently more.”

That bill has seen no movement since being referred to a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee in May, and House Democrats have shown little enthusiasm to advance it. In the wake of the latest violence, though, senators from both parties said the designation merits some consideration.

“I think we have to adjust our laws to recognize the real threat to our national security of these non-state actors, so absolutely we should be considering every opportunity to take the cartels out of business,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Tuesday his office was looking into whether a terrorist designation would be applicable.

“There are parts of Mexico that I’d rather go to Syria than Mexico,” Graham said. “There are places over there that are completely lawless. I don’t know if these cartels are listed as terrorist organizations within our law, but after yesterday, they should be.”

According to Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., the responsibility for preventing cartel violence rests with Mexico, but if the Mexican government cannot handle it, the U.S. should be offering whatever support it can. If legislation designating the cartels FTOs provides additional tools to do that, he would be open to it, but he stressed action can be taken without it.

“Not having that particular designation does not mean we could not also assist them in trying to stop this criminal activity,” Rounds said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has identified Mexican drug trafficking organizations as “the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States,” blaming them for much of the increase in opioid overdoses seen in recent years. Last year, the Justice Department designated three major cartels as transnational criminal organizations and established a task force aimed at eliminating them.

As dangerous as these groups have become, Stewart, a former State Department terrorism investigator, questioned the strategy of treating cartel violence as terrorism because their motives are fundamentally economic and do not fit the legal definition.

“The problem with designating them as terrorists is, quite frankly, they’re not politically motivated... The reason they kill people is to further their economic schemes,” he said.

The cartels sometimes use tactics similar to those of terrorist groups and they clearly inflict terror on communities, but Correa-Cabrera said that does not necessarily make them terrorists.

“We need to understand these criminal groups as criminal corporations,” she said.

However, Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and former counterterrorism official for the Texas Department of Public Safety, has argued a case could be made that the cartels’ intent to prevent the Mexican government from adopting tougher anti-drug enforcement policies could qualify as a political motivation.

“Cartels are, after all, at the root of a great many high-expense Mexican national counterdrug policies, which cartels have sought to influence via heavy bloodshed and terror tactics,” he wrote in a February 2019 blog post.

Meyer is skeptical that such a designation would have as much impact as other measures like helping Mexico improve its justice system to tackle an environment of impunity that emboldens criminals.

“There’s no magic bullet to addressing Mexico’s level of crime and violence. It’s a better use of resources and time to work to build strong institutions in Mexico,” she said.

Although Lopez Obrador has publicly rejected a militarized approach to containing drug cartel violence, the reality has been somewhat different. He has not walked back the policies of his predecessors to the degree he may have hoped.

“Rhetorically, candidate Lopez Obrador said these things about, ‘We need to use peace, make deals with them’but President Lopez Obrador has found that very, very difficult to do,” Stewart said.

According to Correa-Cabrera, it has proven unrealistic to take the military off the streets and leave the Mexican public at the mercy of heavily-armed cartels. Instead, Lopez Obrador established a new military force, the National Guard, to assist with law enforcement efforts.

“He called this ‘Hugs, not bullets,’ an approach that would focus on legalization of marijuana and a more humane approach...,” she said. “However, he formed the National Guard which is a continuation of the militarization of the security strategy.”

Meyer said the Lopez Obrador administration is more focused on addressing the underlying causes that lead people to become involved in crime by improving economic opportunities and eliminating corruption.

“I think there’s a growing consensus that a primarily militarized approach that focuses on the use of force isn’t going to be effective,” she said.

According to Stewart, U.S. options to solve this problem are primarily limited to providing training, resources, and intelligence, and Mexico must do most of the work rooting out corruption and lawlessness.

“Think about the difficulty the U.S. has had rebuilding Afghanistan,” he said.

However, there are actions the Trump administration could take domestically that would reduce the power of the cartels, Correa-Cabrera said, by reducing demand for their product and supply of the weapons they use. These measures include fighting the trafficking of guns into Mexico, treating drug use as a public health crisis, and sharing financial intelligence to combat money laundering.

“The U.S. can do something because one of the main drivers of the war on drugs is basically consumption of drugs,” she said.

President Trump has often called attention to crime and lawlessness south of the border on the campaign trail to stir up support for his border wall and immigration policies. As he mounts his reelection campaign, the latest deaths may reinforce that message about Mexico, but experts say the solutions are more complex than his rhetoric and his calls to “wage WAR” suggest.

“You just can’t kill your way out of the problem in Mexico,” Stewart said.