Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President and Border Czar Kamala Harris requesting that Mexican drug cartels are classified as foreign terrorist organizations.
In the letter, Gov. Abbott added background documentation detailing how these Mexican drug cartels meet the three-part test to determine if an organization can be classified as a foreign terrorist organization.
"[I urge] President [Joe] Biden and Vice President and Border Czar [Kamala] Harris to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations," Gov. Abbott said in a tweet.
Gov. Abbott said that these cartels are terrorizing the southern border in multiple ways including illegal guns and human trafficking.
“These cartels bring terror into our communities. They smuggle narcotics and weapons into the United States to fund their illegal enterprises. They force women and children into human and sex trafficking—enriching themselves on the misery and enslavement of immigrants. They murder innocent people, including women and children. These Mexican drug cartels are foreign terrorist organizations, and it is time for the federal government to designate them as such," Gov. Abbott wrote, as reported by Spectrum News 1.
According to Gov. Abbott, designating these cartels as foreign terrorists would help free up some resources to fight crime at the border.
“Designating Mexican drug carters as foreign terrorist organizations will give your administration new ways to fight back. Providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization is a federal crime of extraterritorial jurisdiction, punishable in some cases by life imprisonment,” Abbott wrote, as reported by Spectrum News 1. “Criminal sentences are significantly longer for drug traffickers who fund foreign terrorist organizations.”
Paul Davis, supervisory special agent with the FBI El Paso Field Office, said Mexican cartels are recruiting El Paso gang members in prison to distribute drugs, bring them guns from the U.S. and if they get deported, become a member of the cartel in Mexico.
Mexico has tremendously strict firearms laws and lack gun-manufacturing facilities, which causes cartels to rely on smuggling firearms from America.
This is the governor's fourth letter to the administration detailing the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, a press release from Gov. Abbott's office said.