Asked at a March 8 briefing if the Biden administration is considering labeling Mexican cartels foreign terrorist organizations (FTO), White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded that the designation would “not grant us any additional authorities.” She argued that Treasury Department sanctions on cartels are working. But events immediately before and immediately after Jean-Pierre’s briefing belie claims that the federal government’s sanctions are, have been or ever will be effective.
On March 6, Mexico’s National Migration Institute reported that 343 migrants, including 103 unaccompanied minors, had been discovered, mostly unharmed, in an abandoned trailer truck. Mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador, the migrants had been traveling along a preferred route that smugglers use to transport their human cargo to the United States. A similar incident last year involving migrants and an abandoned trailer truck left 58 dead.
On March 8, various media outlets reported that four Americans were kidnapped in Matamoros, Mexico; two were later discovered as homicide victims. A Mexican drug cartel admitted its responsibility in the kidnapping/killings.
On March 12, Reuters reported that eight migrants had died after two smuggling vessels capsized off the San Diego coast during California’s stormy weather. Eric Lavergne, U.S. Border Patrol special operations supervisor, said this was one of several hundred migrant smuggling events in his jurisdiction this fiscal year. Included are incidents of migrants swimming, surfboarding or taking panga fishing boats to illegally cross into the U.S.
In recent weeks, beleaguered law enforcement officers of Zavala County, Texas, noted a major uptick in organized migrant smuggling activity on county roads and highways. In just five days last week, Zavala County Sheriff’s Office deputies interdicted 23 separate smuggling ventures attempting to move migrants through the county to reach the U.S. interior.
Located 30 miles from the Rio Grande/Mexico border, Zavala County’s law enforcement officials stopped six migrant-smuggling vehicles on one single day last week. The stops often involve high-speed pursuits, stolen vehicles and property damage. Most concerning to the officers is the frequent presence of loaded weapons within reach of the human smugglers. The smuggling attempts involved more than 100 suspected migrants, some of whom managed to escape arrest by running from pursuing deputies onto private ranches.
Last October, CBS News announced that at least 853 migrants had died during the fiscal year trying to enter the U.S., a total which far exceeded the previous record of 546 migrant deaths that Border Patrol tallied in fiscal year 2021. In its analysis, however, the Government Accountability Office determined that the death totals are likely undercounted because it had “not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths, or disclosed associated data limitations.” Border Patrol only counts migrants it identified or processed on U.S. territory but excludes migrants who died trying to reach the border.
The Biden administration is considering the possible terrorist designation from the wrong perspective. The administration has nothing to lose by assigning FTO to the Mexican cartels. At a minimum, such an action would give the appearance that senior officials worry about border-related deaths of Americans and foreign nationals and the insidious human trafficking that includes transporting minors for sexual exploitation. Even the administration’s most ardent supporters would be hard pressed to criticize the White House for toughening up on the cartel’s multi-billion dollar drug trafficking empire. Fentanyl, the most lucrative of the cartel’s drug smuggling crimes, was the major contributor to 42,000 U.S. deaths in 2021.
The law governing how FTO is assigned is clear. Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides that the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, may designate a group as an FTO on finding that it engages in terrorist activity as defined in INA Section 212(a)(3) or terrorism as defined at 22 U.S.C. Section 2656f(d)(2). The Mexican cartels’ documented criminal conduct – drugs and human trafficking – clearly meets or exceeds the threshold FTO definitions, including specifically as to the ongoing threat they represent to U.S. national security.
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