Graham wants military force to be used against cartels

Senator Lindsey Graham on Wednesday released a plan to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and urged Congress to authorize the use of military force to destroy Mexican drug labs.

The South Carolina Republican held a press conference on Capitol Hill, where he stood next to Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy to explain his plans.

“I think John and I believe that if there was an ISIS or Al Qaeda cell in Mexico that fired a missile at Texas, we would wipe them off the planet,” Graham said. “They do that by the thousands and our response is inadequate.”

Graham was referring to the scourge of fentanyl deaths plaguing the nation.

“We’re going to unleash the rage and power of the United States against these cartels,” Graham continued. “We are going to destroy their business model and lifestyle because our national security and the security of the United States as a whole depends on our decisive action.”

The first step, Graham said, was to improve the way the cartels are designated by the US government.

He called the Foreign Terrorist Organization’s label the “top of the food chain.”

And said that by viewing the drug cartels as FTOs, the US could go after the Chinese chemical companies that supply the raw materials to make fentanyl, among other things.

“We think the Democrats will be involved,” Graham noted.

The second step, Graham explained, is less likely because it would require congressional approval and the signature of President Joe Biden.

Graham said he believed the House and Senate should pass a bill authorizing the use of military force against Mexico’s drug cartels.

He said the US military would be used “not to invade Mexico, not to shoot down Mexican planes, but to destroy drug labs that poison Americans.”

Mexican police officers are photographed walking around a clandestine drug lab in Carrizalejo, Mexico in 2018. Graham wants to use US military to go after Mexican drug labs producing fentanyl

Members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel pose with masks and firearms. Graham wants Mexican drug cartels to be considered foreign terrorist organizations so that their suppliers in China can also be prosecuted

The military would “go after these organizations wherever they exist,” Graham explained.

Graham recalled how the US military teamed up with the Colombian military to go after the “cocaine narco-state” and pondered why the same thing didn’t happen in Mexico.

Mexico is a safe haven. It’s a narco-terrorist state. The safe harbor allows Mexican cartels to deliver lethal doses of fentanyl into our country with impunity,” Graham said.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre rejected Graham’s idea that designating Mexican drug cartels as FTOs would make a difference.

“Designating these cartels as FTOs would not give us additional powers,” said Jean-Pierre.

She argued that punishing cartels through the Treasury Department was a better way to go after them.

“And this means drug traffickers can no longer use family or friends to hide their assets from the reach of the US government,” she said. “So again, we don’t believe this will give us additional powers.”