On Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order officially designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Abbott urged President Joe Biden to do the same to combat human trafficking at the border and the smuggling of fentanyl, a drug so lethal that it is potentially capable of killing all Americans.
Fentanyl is a clandestine killer, and Texans are falling victim to the Mexican cartels that are producing it.
Today, I issued an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and directed @TxDPS to target cartel operations. https://t.co/ymkVWUPj8C pic.twitter.com/X0RPm2rfu0
- Gov. Greg Abbott (@GovAbbott) September 21, 2022
Abbott's executive order singled out the Mexican drug cartels as being directly responsible for the trafficking of hundreds of millions of lethal doses of fentanyl into Texas and the United States. The Texas governor reported that more than 1,600 Texans were fatally poisoned by drugs containing fentanyl in 2021, this represents an increase of more than 680% since 2018, added to this, he stated that the number of fentanyl deaths continues to rise in 2022.
Mexican Cartels and Border Violence
Abbott denounced that the Mexican drug cartels also traffic human beings across the border and subject immigrants to "sexual assault, human trafficking, assault, extortion and other dehumanizing, violent and heinous acts." In essence, the executive order pointed to the struggles for control of territory, and the expansion of these Mexican cartels throughout the country as the origin of the increase in deadly violence.
Abbott's order targeted certain cartels specifically: the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel, as well as any other criminal organization that can be identified as carrying out these activities now labeled as "terrorist" in Texas.
EO-GA-42 Mexican Cartels Foreign Terrorist Orgs IMAGE 09-21-2022 by VozMedia on Scribd
Abbott asks Biden to join in declaring cartels as terrorist organizations
The Texas governor asked Biden to also designate these Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
In a letter, Abbott reminded the president that this declaration as foreign terrorist organizations would enhance the apprehension, prosecution and disruption of these cartels, while raising awareness of the evilness of their activities, "deadly to our citizens and the international community."
This is the second time Abbott has made this request to the president. In April 2021, the governor of Texas asked Biden to designate Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. He said that since then "there has been no action or response".
If you are willing to make Americans safer (...) it will be better late than never. As the death toll of Americans continues to rise due to the terrorist behavior of the cartels, now is the time to act. We have no more time to waste.
