Rep. Chip Roy: Designate Certain Mexican Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations

U.S. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) renewed his call for the Department of State to designate certain Mexican cartel factions as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The designation would bring additional law enforcement tools into play for officials attempting to combat the impact of these cartels on the U.S.

“President Trump was right back in February to say that he was seriously considering designating these specific cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO),” Congressman Roy said in a Fox and Friends interview Sunday morning. “I introduced legislation in March calling on the State Department to do that. We literally have a fire going on in our back yard just across the Rio Grande River in Mexico.”

Roy explained some of the terroristic actions by these cartel factions including the release of El Chapo’s son following the cartel retaliation against the government, a story about 13 Mexican police officers being gunned down for opposing the cartels, 26 people set on fire in a bar with the exits blocked, bodies being put in sulfuric acid, beheadings, and mass graves.

“We have nine bodies hanging from a bridge in August, and seven being chopped up and found on the side of the road,” he continued. “These are the tactics of dangerous organizations that are targeting and terrorizing Mexican citizens and Americans as we are now seeing with these unfortunate nine dead Americans including three women and six children.”

“This is something we can target and address,” the Texas congressman stated. “We need to treat these cartels as the terrorist organizations they are.”

Roy said the designation would provide law enforcement and the intelligence community “the tools we need to target them.” He said the designation would help limit the cartel members’ ability to travel and would provide tools for stopping people from providing financial support to their organizations.

The congressman explained that the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel is making $100 million per week for smuggling humans across the border through the McAllen, Texas, region. “They make $100 million per week moving people, not drugs,” Roy stated. “We need to act somewhat regardless of what the Mexican authorities are doing in order to target stopping these organizations who are harming our national security interests. We can do it in concert with the Mexican authorities, but they’re under fire.”

“I frankly am tired of bureaucrats at the State Department sitting around waiting while the president seems to get it — that we need to recognize them as terrorist organizations,” Roy concluded, “but he’s got people around him in the White House and the State Department who are refusing to actually do it.”

“If Tamaulipas is a Level 4 state as declared by the State Department — saying that no American should travel there,” Roy asserted. “What’s holding the State Department back from recognizing that the Cartel del Noreste of Los Zetas, or the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel, or the Sinaloas, or any of these dangerous cartels should be recognized as the terrorist organizations that they are.”