WHILE THE U.S. SQUANDERS HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS AND TROOPS TO
DEFEND THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS WHO HATE OUR GUTS, MEXICO IS OVERRUN
AMERICAN WITH DRUGS!
GRAPHIC: Gulf Cartel Gunmen Burn
Rivals Alive in Mexico near Texas Border
Washington, D.C
(December 2, 2019 ) – The Center for Immigration Studies presents
arguments for and against the Trump administration’s actions to designate
some Mexican drug trafficking cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations
(FTO). An FTO designation triggers powerful American authorities to
freeze financial assets, prosecute for activities that
support terrorism, and bar entry into the country.
CIS fellow Dan Cadman urges the designation of cartels as FTOs, arguing,
“Nine dual-citizen U.S./Mexican Mormons were murdered recently in Mexico,
U.S. diplomatic personnel have been brazenly attacked and U.S. enforcement
agents murdered on the Mexican side when it suits cartel interests. In U.S.
border states and major metropolitan areas, many drug-related murders are
the direct result of struggles for control between cartels.” Cadman
continues, “We must up our own game. Official designation brings with it a
multiplicity of legal authorities and penalties that can make a difference
in how the United States responds, in our own interest, to the struggle for
control of Mexico.”
CIS fellow Todd Bensman argues that the U.S. hold off designating Mexican
Cartels as FTOs as the action could dilute “America's war on some
70 currently designated Islamic terrorist groups that aspire,
emphatically unlike any of Mexico's cartels, to kill as many Americans as
possible on American soil the present war on Jihadists.” He continues, “The
sometimes shrill calls, with each new gun battle or atrocity, that
Mexican cartels imminently threaten U.S. national security don't hold up
under scrutiny, at least not without more evidence. If the U.S.
government insists on adding a massive layer of new terrorists to existing
U.S. counterterrorism systems, plans for how to resource it and allocate
the greater burden among agencies, without taking from the war on terror,
should be laid out first.”
FTO designation is a powerful tool. So should the U.S. designate Mexico's
major cartels as foreign terrorist organizations under Section
219 of
the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)? Section 219 provides that
the secretary of state may designate a group as a FTO on finding that it
engages in terrorist activity as defined at INA Section 212(a)(3) or
terrorism as defined at 22 U.S.C. Section 2656f(d)(2). Does Mexican Cartel
conduct meet the threshold definitions, including specifically as a threat
to the national security of the United States?
Mexico
Will Reject U.S. Designations of Cartels as Terrorists, Says AMLO
Mexico’s president announced Monday that he will reject any
designation of cartels as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
During his morning press conference, Mexican President Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said he would not accept the U.S.’s potential
designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations–which could enable
direct actions in Mexico.
“We will never accept that, we are not ‘vendepatrias’ (nation
sellers),” Lopez Obrador said.
The president’s statements come
after the relatives of nine U.S. women and children who died in a cartel ambush in
Sonora revealed they would be meeting with President Donald Trump. The family is
expected to ask for some cartels to be labeled as terrorist organizations.
Last week, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca used the
term “narco-terrorism” to refer to the brazen attacks on citizens of Nuevo
Laredo by a faction of Los Zetas Cartel called Cartel Del Noreste. Cabeza de
Vaca publicly called out Mexico City for past inaction in confronting Los
Zetas.
On Monday morning, Lopez Obrador’s foreign relations minister
Marcelo Ebrard called designations unnecessary and inconvenient, adding that
the U.S. and Mexico have a healthy working relationship in fighting cartels.
According to Ebrard, terrorist designations would give the U.S. the legal
avenue to take direct action on cartels on Mexican soil.
Ildefonso
Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded
Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior
Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook . He can be contacted
at Iortiz@breitbart.com .
Brandon
Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He
co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and
senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook . He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com .
Enough Is Enough’: Josh Hawley Calls for Sanctions on Mexican
Cartels
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday that
“enough is enough” and called on the U.S. government to sanction Mexican officials
and cartel members complicit in trafficking meth and killing Americans.
Hawley called for harsh
retribution against the Mexican cartels complicit in ambushing and murdering
nine American women and children near the New Mexico border.
In the wake of the attack on
Americans, as well as the Mexican cartels’ complicity in Missouri’s meth
crisis, the Missouri conservative called for the U.S. government to sanction
the cartel members who are “openly slaughtering American citizens.”
“With Mexico, enough is enough. US
government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing
assets, who won’t confront cartels,” Hawley tweeted Wednesday. “Cartels are
flooding MO [Missouri] w/ meth, trafficking children, & openly slaughtering
American citizens. And Mexico looks the other way.”
Hawley said that just over the last
14 days, there had been over 40 drug overdoses coming from drugs across
America’s southern border.
Hawley continued, “In SW Mo last two
weeks alone, over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming
across [the] southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels
increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot
allow this to continue.”
With Mexico, enough is enough. US
government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing
assets, who won’t confront cartels. Cartels are flooding MO w/ meth, trafficking
children, & openly slaughtering American citizens. And Mexico looks the
other way
In SW Mo last two weeks alone, over 40 drug
overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across southern border. Story
is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico,
and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue
Hawley spent much of his August
recess traveling across rural Missouri, learning what matters to the average
Missourian.
This AM I had the great privilege of
meeting Brittany Tune, a nurse, a mother of two, a follower of God, and a remarkable
woman. Born & raised in rural Shannon Co., she has raised two kids on her
own while putting herself through nursing school & dedicating her life to
others
Brittany says meth is hammering this
community. She has many friends & family members who have been touched by
this epidemic. She worries about what it means for her own kids, ages 15 &
10. It’s much worse now than when she was growing up, she says
In an interview with Breitbart News
in September, Hawley said that meth coming from
Mexico is destroying local Missouri communities.
“Come with me to any town, any town
in the state of Missouri of any size, and I will show you communities that are
drowning in meth, drowning in it. It is literally killing people; it is
destroying families it is destroying schools and whole communities,” he said.
“Missouri is a border state,” Hawley
said, adding that “we have to got to secure the border to stop the meth” and
“stop the flow of illegal immigration.”
Hawley’s remarks about the Mexican
cartel attack on Americans mirrors that of President Donald Trump, who said Tuesday that the
United States was ready for war against the drug cartels.
“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,” the president tweeted.
Trump has campaigned on cracking
down on violence on the southern border as well as handling the drug cartels.
During an exclusive interview with
Breitbart News, Trump said he is “very seriously” thinking of designating the
drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
“It’s psychological, but it’s also
economic,” Trump told Breitbart News in March. “As terrorists — as terrorist
organizations, the answer is yes. They are.”
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Breitbart News in May
that he would back Trump’s potential designation of the Mexican cartels as FTOs
and that seizing cartel leader El Chapo’s assets would build the wall and make
the cartels pay for it. In a similar manner to Missouri, Daines told Breitbart
News about how Montana has been ravaged by meth from Mexican cartels.
Daines said that by seizing
“billions” of El Chapo’s assets, it “would absolutely fulfill President Trump’s
promise to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. In this case, it would be
a Mexican cartel paying for it would be an excellent idea.”
Sean
Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @ SeanMoran3 .
The architect of Mexico's war on cartels was just arrested in
Texas and accused of drug trafficking and taking bribes
45 Comments
Genaro
Garcia Luna Mexico
LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images
·
Genaro Garcia Luna, who was
Mexico's public-security secretary between 2006 and 2012, was arrested in Texas
on Monday.
·
Garcia Luna, the architect of
Mexico's campaign against organized crime in the late 2000s, is the latest
Mexican official accused of corruption and involvement in drug trafficking.
A former high-ranking Mexican
security official who led the country's crackdown on organized crime in the
mid-2000s was arrested in the US and been charged with drug-trafficking
conspiracy and making false statements.
Genaro Garcia Luna, 51, was
arrested in Dallas by US federal agents, according to the US district attorney
for the Eastern District of New York, which said it plans to seek his removal
to face charges in New York.
"Garcia Luna stands accused
of taking millions of dollars in bribes from 'El Chapo' Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel
while he controlled Mexico's Federal Police Force and was responsible for
ensuring public safety in Mexico," US Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said in
the release.
Garcia Luna faces three counts of
conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and a fourth count of making false
statements with regard to an immigration naturalization application.
Garcia Luna began his career with
Mexico's Center for National Security and Investigation in the late 1980s
before moving to the federal police in the late 1990s. He was then head of
Mexico's federal investigation agency, AFI, between 2001 and 2005 and secretary
of public security, then a cabinet-level position in control of the federal
police, between 2006 and 2012.
Genaro
Garcia Luna Felipe Calderon Mexico
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/GettyImages
He was 38 when appointed to the
latter position by then-President Felipe Calderon but already had nearly 20
years of experience in Mexico's security services, much of it spent tracking
organized crime and drug trafficking.
"By his late 20s, he was
considered something of a wunderkind," according to a 2008 New York Times profile.
"He really was the architect
of Calderon's war on drugs," said Mike Vigil, former chief of
international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, who worked
with Garcia Luna in Mexico in the 1990s.
That war comprised major military
deployments inside the country and the kingpin strategy, which entailed
targeting high-level cartel figures in an effort to weaken the cartels. This
approach has been criticized for fostering more violence, both by state forces and
fragmented cartels .
According to the release, Garcia
Luna received millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. In return,
the release states, the cartel received safe passage for drug shipments,
sensitive law-enforcement information about investigations targeting it, and
information about rival cartels — all of which allowed it to move multiton
quantities of drugs into the US.
Financial records obtained by the
US government showed that by the time Garcia Luna relocated to the US in 2012,
he had a personal fortune worth millions of dollars, according to the release,
which said he is also accused of lying about those alleged criminal acts on an
application for naturalization submitted in 2018.
'Another black eye for
Mexico'
El Chapo
Joaquin Guzman
Reuters
One detail in the release
mirrors allegations made during the trial of Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman, who was convicted on drug trafficking and other charges in the Eastern
District of New York in February.
"On two occasions, the
cartel personally delivered bribe payments to Garcia Luna in briefcases
containing between three and five million dollars," the release states.
During testimony in November
2018, Jesus "El Rey" Zambada — the youngest brother of Ismael
"El Mayo" Zambada, who is considered Guzman's peer at the top of the
Sinaloa cartel and now its de facto leader — said the cartel twice made
multimillion-dollar payments to Garcia Luna.
A $3 million payment, which
"El Rey" said was to Garcia Luna at a restaurant in Mexico City
between 2005 and 2006, was to ensure he would pick a specific official as
police chief in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state and the cartel's home turf.
"El Rey" said the other
payment, between $3 million and $5 million, was in 2007 and was to make sure
"he didn't interfere in the drug business" and that "El
Mayo" was not arrested. Zambada also said that the Sinaloa cartel and its
partners also pooled $50 million in protection money for Garcia Luna.
A press officer for the Eastern
District of New York did not immediately respond when asked by email whether
the charges unsealed Tuesday against Garcia Luna stemmed from allegations made
during Guzman's trial.
At the time, Garcia Luna denied
Zambada's claims, calling them a " lie, defamation and perjury ." On Tuesday, Calderon said he had heard of Garcia Luna's
arrest but was awaiting confirmation and further details, tweeting that his "position will always be in favor of justice
and the law."
El Chapo
Guzman home town
REUTERS/Roberto Armenta
Vigil, who was the DEA assistant
country attache to Mexico during the 1990s, was skeptical of the allegations
made during the Guzman trial and said he was "surprised" by the
arrest on Tuesday.
"I worked with Genaro Garcia
Luna," Vigil said. "We, DEA, had a very good working relationship
with Genaro. At that time there were no allegations of corruption. There we
coordinated investigations with them, and we never saw any evidence of
compromise."
The allegations made during that
trial seemed "less than credible," Vigil said, in large part because
Guzman was arrested twice during the administration of President Enrique Peña
Nieto, who followed Calderon into office in 2012.
But it was possible that a
high-ranking Mexican official could obscure activities in one area from their
work with the US in another area.
"In terms of what the US
sees, [it's] very different than what occurs within the Mexican government, but
through time if he were taking bribes, obviously some of those investigations,
you would've known if they had been compromised," Vigil said. "But
there's some areas that could be compartmentalized in terms of efforts by the
Mexican government."
If convicted on the
drug-conspiracy charge, Garcia Luna faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10
years and a maximum of life in jail.
"Today's arrest demonstrates
our resolve to bring to justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm
on the United States and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while
committing their crimes." Donoghue, the US attorney, said in the release,
thanking the DEA, the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, as well
as police in New York City and New York state.
Regardless of the outcome of the
case, it tarnishes a bilateral relationship in which cooperation against
organized crime and drug trafficking has been a major component.
"I don't know what the
evidence is against Genaro Garcia Luna," Vigil said Tuesday, "but it
certainly is another black eye for Mexico."
Mexican
President Pushes Amnesty on Crime, Senate to Decide
Mexico’s
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is pushing for a new bill that would
grant amnesty to thousands of currently jailed individuals. The bill called Ley
de Amnistia or Amnesty Law is expected to go before Mexico’s Senate. If the
senate passes the bill, it would lead to the release of thousands of
individuals who have been “unjustly jailed”.
Mexico’s leading Senator Ricardo
Monreal said the law is part of a process aimed at bringing peace to Mexico,
Mexico’s Vanguardia reported. The bill
is supposed to target underage teens and women who have been forced to commit
crimes by organized criminal groups, women who were forced by their lovers to
carry weapons, and farmers who were forced to grow drugs by giving them a
chance at freedom and access to jobs, Mexico’s Animal Politico reported.
According to Mexico’s Secretary of
the Interior Olga Sanchez Cordero, the bill is not meant as a measure of
impunity, because the bill would also look at crime victims and
reparations, Animal Politico reported. The
politician also said in multiple interviews that the bill would not apply to
those convicted of serious offenses such as murder, kidnapping, and crimes
against humanity.
The news comes as Mexican border
cities like Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa continue to be hotspots of violence where
violent drug cartels such as factions of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel
regularly use armored vehicles with mounted machine guns, .50 caliber rifles,
and grenade launchers to clash with state police officers. In most of the recent
gun battles, federal authorities and military forces have been absent or only
made an appearance after the shooting ended. This led the governor of Tamaulipas to publicly call out the federal
government for not fighting against cartels , Breitbart Texas reported.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart
Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon
Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook . He can be contacted
at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of
Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with
Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook . He can be contacted
at bdarby@breitbart.com.
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