Exclusive – Arizona AG Candidate Abe Hamadeh: I Will Declare Cartels a Terrorist Group on Day One in Office

Former prosecutor in Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Abe Hamadeh, who is running as a Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for Arizona Attorney General, told Breitbart News Saturday this weekend that he will “designate the cartels as terrorist organizations … on day one.”

Hamadeh, who is an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and deployed for 14 months in Saudi Arabia, where he negotiated military sales and managed the training for their county’s domestic security forces, told Breitbart News that he plans to work with the state legislature and the governor to declare the influx of border crossers coming into the country an “invasion” and “designate the cartels as terrorist organizations … on day one, January 3 of 2023, when we take office.”

He noted that the Biden administration would likely try to sue Arizona just like the administration has sued the Grand Canyon State over requiring IDs to vote in the federal election. However, he said this is where states’ Attorneys General, such as himself, when elected, need to push back.

The Republican explained that under current state law, the legislature uses the “U.S. Department of State’s definition of what a terrorist is.” He added that State had been politicized.

He explained, “the Afghan Taliban was not listed as a terrorist organization until January of 2021,” but the Yemen Houthi rebels firing missiles at the U.S. military when he was serving were “de-listed” as a terrorist organization under President Joe Biden.

“Border security is national security,” Hamadeh declared. “I no longer see what’s going down at the border as a federal immigration issue. I see it as a state sovereignty problem. And so I want to protect Arizonans.”

Hamadeh further explained that by allowing the cartels to be identified as terrorists, they would be able to use enhanced sentencing guidelines. “So instead of just getting five years in prison for drug smuggling, they’ll possibly be getting ten years minimum, same with the human trafficking that’s been going on. But you know, this is a humanitarian disaster that’s going down on the border, not just for the illegal immigrants who are crossing, obviously, but it’s the ones who are dying in this heat. But it’s also because Biden has completely advertised so rural, that it’s wide open. Obviously, who doesn’t want to come to the United States? But it’s also looking at the amount of fentanyl that’s pouring across our border,” he added.

“It’s huge because now the cartels are not just focusing on bringing the drugs over, or the fentanyl over,” Hamadeh added. “Now, they’re really involved in the human trafficking because, for them, they, they don’t care if they, you know, lose an illegal immigrant to them. It doesn’t matter. So what they’re doing is charging illegals $10, $20, or $30,000, depending on the country of origin, to get across the United States.”

Under Trump, he said, “there was about 15,000 illegal immigrants crossing the border … compared to now 240,000 every single month. I mean, that is an invasion. And it’s because President Biden has opened the door and put a welcome mat at our southern border.”

Hamadeh is running in the Arizona Attorney General Republican primary on August 2, and he appears to have a solid lead. He held a seven-point lead in the poll conducted by KAConsulting LLC from July 11 to 12 with 400 registered voters. 

Seventeen percent said they would vote for Hamadeh, while ten percent said they would vote for Dawn Grove, and the rest of the candidates in the Republican primary — Rodney Glassman, Andrew Gould, Tiffany Shedd, and Lacy Cooper — were in the single digits. However, with only weeks to go before the primary, 57 percent said they are still undecided.

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.