ORLANDO, Florida — Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), one of the two lead sponsors of legislation that would authorize the use of military force against Mexican drug cartels, told Breitbart News exclusively that the U.S. needs to begin treating the cartels like terrorist cells like Al Qaeda or ISIS to effectively defeat them.
Waltz, who along with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) introduced a resolution that is an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Mexican drug cartels, told Breitbart News that he does not envision a U.S. military invasion of Mexico but he could see selective targeted strikes against key cartel personnel if his resolution is adopted.
“We’re not talking about an invasion of Mexico. That’s just a bunch of nonsense,” Waltz said. “Could we be talking about very selective special operations targeting of key personnel or kill/capture? Yes, absolutely. Again, we got to begin thinking about them differently. In the 90s, we were running around the world trying to arrest Al Qaeda. After 9/11, we were killing or capturing Al Qaeda. So that is the mindset and that is the actual authorization from Congress we’re trying to get passed for the administration.”
Waltz’s comments came during an interview here at the House GOP conference retreat last month. He said that the AUMF against the cartels would allow the use of resources from the Pentagon that current law enforcement agencies combatting the cartels do not have access to, like U.S. space assets and satellites for targeting purposes and cyber assets to disrupt cartel operations.
“It essentially authorizes military resources,” Waltz said. “So, space assets for targeting. Your Border Patrol—our law enforcement and border entities don’t have their own space assets. The military does. Offensive cyber—as opposed to just defending our networks here at home, but actually getting inside somebody else’s networks and start disrupting their money, their logistics, their ability to communicate. That all sits inside the Defense Department. So, this would authorize the use—this would authorize the use of military force, but I think it’s more accurate to call it resources.”
In response to Waltz’s proposal, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he is opposed to it—and threatened to urge Mexican Americans to vote against Republicans in American elections.
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – SEPTEMBER 26: President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during the Ayotzinapa case report at Palacio Nacional on September 26, 2020 in Mexico City, Mexico. On september 26 of 2014, 43 students of Isidro Burgos Rural School of Ayotzinapa disappeared in Iguala city after clashing with police forces. The students were accused of attempting the kidnap of buses to be used for protests. The government of former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto led an investigation which revealed that corrupt police officers kidnapped the students and then were handed to members of a drug cartel who killed them after a few hours. Known as the ‘Verdad Historica’ (Historical Truth) this version has been refuted by the current government to find evidence that proves what actually happened to the students. (Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images)
“In addition to being irresponsible, it is an offense to the people of Mexico,” Lopez Obrador said in March.
Asked about this threat, Waltz told Breitbart News that he thinks U.S. lawmakers have gotten Mexico’s attention for sure.
“Look, whenever you have a leftist like AMLO calling you out by name and threatening to interfere in our elections, I think you’ve gotten their attention,” Waltz said. “He said this was a violation of Mexico’s sovereignty, that this kind of intervention is this militaristic talk that is going to force him to get involved in American elections and tell Hispanic Americans and Mexican Americans not to vote Republican. Okay, let’s talk about sovereignty for a minute. These cartels effectively control our border. According to many estimates, they control as much as 30 to 40 percent of Mexico. Essentially, AMLO has lost control of whole parts of his country. In accordance with international law, you have an obligation as a nation to not allow transnational terrorists or criminal actors to destabilize and kill the citizens of your neighbor.”
TO GO WITH AFP STORY
Federal Police officers protect the area called ‘Green Zone” where hundreds of businesses are beign affected by the wave of violence due the war between drug cartels and the Mexican Army and Federal Police, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on July 13, 2011. While local businesses have been devastated by high murder rates and criminal gangs in Mexico’s most deadly city of Ciudad Juarez, multinational industry is booming. Many small shops lie empty on the desolate streets of the border city across from El Paso, Texas, while foreign manufacturers are setting up more plants known as “maquiladoras”, which import and assemble duty-free components for export. Some companies have increased their security costs in northern border cities such as Ciudad Juarez but officials say maquiladoras are not threatened because they lack what gangs want most, cash. AFP PHOTO/JESUS ALCAZAR (Photo credit should read Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images)
Waltz said he welcomes a discussion with Mexico’s president about sovereignty.
“That’s my response to AMLO: If we want to talk sovereignty, let’s talk sovereignty,” Waltz said. “Terrorist organizations operating from Mexican soil are poisoning our cities and control our border well into inside our border. It’s a human rights issue. It’s a sovereignty issue. We have to defend our citizens.”
In addition to comparing the cartels to terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda, Waltz noted that the U.S. in the 1990s under then-Democrat President Bill Clinton engaged in successful military operations in cooperation with the Colombian government against cartels operating in Colombia. The operation, called Plan Colombia, was successful in neutralizing two major cartels.
“The bottom line is if Al Qaeda and ISIS poisoned 80,000 Americans through chemical weapons or fentanyl, what have you, we would be mobilizing everything we had to take them out. We would be doing the same thing,” Waltz said. “We did it in Colombia in the 90s with Plan Colombia with the Cali and the Medellin cartels. There’s no reason we can’t do the same with the Mexican cartels.”
Officials are raising the alarm that children are being targeted by drug cartels ahead of the Halloween season after authorities discovered 15,000 fentanyl pills hidden in candy packaging in Connecticut, U.S. Attorney Connecticut
Waltz said the measure is getting lots of support among Republicans—former President Donald Trump endorsed a similar idea when he was president but never did it, and has called for this type of policy again if elected in 2024—but no Democrat support publicly as of yet.
“We’re getting a heck of a lot of Republican support,” Waltz said. “We’re having conversations with some Democrats that I think eventually will get on board and then we’ll put it through committee and see if we can’t get it to the floor.”
Waltz noted that when Trump first suggested this he thought it was a great idea even though much of the establishment laughed it off at the time.
“The national security establishment just scoffed, and this came out in Mark Esper’s book and everybody kind of scoffed at it [when Trump suggested this] but I think it was a damn good idea,” Waltz said.
To make it through this current Congress, especially the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate, the measure would need to get Democrat support. Waltz said he and other backers of this proposal are talking to senators and believes there is a pathway to adopting an AUMF against the cartels in both chambers of Congress.
“Yeah, we’re having [some conversations]. I think you’re going to see first from the Senate the terrorism designation,” Waltz said. “So I’ve talked to a couple of key senators and they want to actually label them as terrorists and then come in with the authorization of the use of military force. So that’s their process, but I do think you’re going to see a parallel process on this.”
Waltz added that things are getting so bad with the cartels that he thinks some Democrats will have no choice but to join the effort to fight back.
“It’s unbelievable and I eventually think you’re going to see some Democrats get on board,” Waltz said. “These cartels are smuggling humans, they’re smuggling drugs, they’re smuggling weapons, they are in cahoots with manufacturers in China, and these are multimillion dollar enterprises. What people need to understand is that it is beyond the scope of law enforcement to handle anymore. The Mexican Army is being fought to a standstill. A couple weeks ago, they took 50 casualties including some of their aircraft shot up from armored vehicles with these cartels. These are terrorist organizations terrorizing us and our neighbors and I want to start treating them that way.”
An activist hangs a picture of a missing man after lifting an “anti-monument” to mark the 10th anniversary of the San Fernando Massacre in which 72 migrants on route to the United States were killed in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, in front of the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, on August 22, 2020. (PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images)
As for whether current Democrat President Joe Biden would do anything even if Congress passed an AUMF against the cartels, Waltz is not optimistic. But he hopes a Republican will win the 2024 presidential election and would take the work Congress has done now and by then to act where Biden has failed to.
“I don’t think Biden is going to do a damn thing,” Waltz said. “You would think he would because politically it would make him look a little more tough than he does, but at the end of the day I think they’re fine with an open border. I think as you saw when he went down to Mexico and he barely brought up the border that their priority is DEI and climate, so it’s just not going to be [something Biden focuses on] but however this is also setting the stage for next year and I hope to see a Republican president in the White House in 2024.”