Arizona Attorney General: Declare Drug Cartels Terrorist Groups

Verbatim post from NEWSMAX

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne told Congress on Wednesday that the United States should designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Such a designation by the State Department would place Mexican drug trafficking organizations on the same list as al-Qaida, the Taliban, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

And it would subject the cartels to the freezing of monetary assets and tough criminal prosecution of those who provide them with material or monetary support.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, has introduced a bill calling on the secretary of state to officially list Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Testifying before a House Homeland Security Oversight, Investigations, and Management Subcommittee hearing, chaired by McCaul, Horne said, “I certainly do agree with the chairman’s bill to designate cartels as terrorist organizations. Among other things, it makes it an enhanced crime to supply aid to those organizations and that obviously would be a very powerful tool in fighting them.”

McCaul said the bill would provide “more authority to go after [Mexican drug cartels] and those who provide them with assistance,” adding that they should be called what they really are — terrorists, CNS News reported.

Federal officials maintain there is no need to make that designation because there are already enough laws on the books to punish the cartels. “The designation I don’t think would help us,” said Grayling Williams, director of the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security. “I think we have laws on the books that we need to apply and have worked with us for several years.”

Rep. William Keating of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said the United States “has successfully used the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act to sanction Mexican drug trafficking organizations.” But McCaul said that the act goes after only the cartel leaders, not the people under them.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, told Newsmax.TV on Wednesday: “The administration’s own inspector general has said the border is 44 percent secure. If it’s only 44 percent secure, that means somebody else controls the other 56 percent. If it’s not the United States and it’s not Mexico, then it’s the drug cartels and anyone else who wishes to come in."