Politics

EXCLUSIVE: Senate GOPers Will Propose Labeling Drug Cartels ‘Foreign Terrorist Organizations’

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Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Rick Scott of Florida will introduce legislation on Thursday designating four Mexican drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations.

The Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller, would subject the Reynosa/Los Metros faction of the Gulf Cartel’s Reynosa/Los Metros faction, the Los Zetas Cartel Del Noreste faction, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and the Sinaloa Cartel to sanctions under the Immigration and National Act. The designation would prohibit people in the U.S. from offering “material support or resources” to the cartels, and allows the federal government to seize their assets.

The bill also gives the Secretary of State to sanction other cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. The State Department currently lists 68 groups as foreign terrorist organizations, although none are drug cartels.

Read the bill here:

(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers

“The illicit drugs and other deadly activities being carried out by cartels are killing Americans at record rates. Since Joe Biden and the Democrats continue to turn a blind eye, we are going to do something about it by designating the drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” Marshall said in a statement to the Daily Caller. “As these cartels continue to invade our porous southern border in an increasingly militarized approach, this designation is needed to ramp up our efforts to combat them. We will not rest in our fight to stop fentanyl’s terrible scourge wreaking havoc in Kansas and across the U.S.”

More than 105,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, with more than 71,000 of those caused by fentanyl. House Republicans have proposed increasing penalties for drug trafficking, while Senate Republicans have proposed making fentanyl distribution a death penalty-level crime. Federal officials have seized nearly than 13,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border in Fiscal Year 2022, a record-high amount. (RELATED: Senators Press Top Biden Admin Official On ‘Embarrassing’ Response To Fentanyl, Opioid Epidemic)

“Fentanyl is a leading cause of death among young people in the United States—and those who knowingly distribute the highly lethal drug are declaring war on Americans. For far too long, people have suffered addiction and death because of this evil drug that is pouring across Joe Biden’s open southern border; and to put an end to this crisis, these cartels must be held accountable and classified as terrorists. I am proud to join Senator Marshall in standing up against this crisis and urge this commonsense legislation pass the Senate immediately,” Scott added.

Fentanyl is primarily produced in China, and then shipped to Mexico. Cartels mix it into drugs to make their products cheaper, although miscalculations in dose amount frequently leads to death. The drug is considered lethal at a two milligram dose.