Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wants the billions of dollars confiscated from an infamous Mexican drug lord to finance the construction of a wall on the Mexican-American border.
“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” Cruz said Tuesday in a statement unveiling the El Chapo Act, named after the drug kingpin who was extradited to the United States in January.
Cruz’s bill, if implemented as conceived, would provide the $14 billion subject to confiscation from El Chapo as well as money taken from drug lords arrested in future cases. It’s a bankshot at border funding designed to fulfill the spirit of President Trump’s pledge to “make Mexico pay” for the wall that has gained currency among some Republicans.
“Having the money seized from Mexican drug cartels would mean that the bad Mexicans would end up paying for the wall, and the bad Mexicans have been terrorizing the good Mexicans with crime and kidnappings and murders within Mexico itself,” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told the Washington Examiner while discussing his plan to spend money seized in drug busts for the wall. “Saying that we’re going to have the Mexican drug cartels end up paying for the wall, that may very well be something that is powerful enough to get the institutional inertia in the Senate overcome.”
Sensenbrenner’s proposal relies on a process known as civil asset forfeiture, a process that allows law enforcement to seize assets from someone without judicial oversight. That practice has troubled some Republicans and Democrats, including Sensenbrenner, due to past abuses.
“With origins in medieval law, civil asset forfeiture is premised on the legal fiction that inanimate objects bear moral culpability when used for wrongdoing,” the Wisconsin Republican wrote in a 2015 op-ed. “The practice regained prominence as a weapon in the modern drug wars as law enforcement sought to disrupt criminal organizations by seizing the cash that sustains them. It has, however, proven a greater affront to civil rights than it has a weapon against crime.”
Cruz’s bill could enjoy all the political advantages of Sensenbrenner’s bill without the risk of splitting the coalition in favor of the border wall, because it relies on criminal asset forfeiture, which takes place in the context of a prosecution.
“By leveraging any criminally forfeited assets of El Chapo and his ilk, we can offset the wall’s cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trump’s stated border security objectives,” Cruz said.
The US government is seeking the criminal forfeiture of $14B+ in drug proceeds & illicit profits from El Chapo. https://t.co/5SElazzr9X pic.twitter.com/wkIp10NEik
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) April 25, 2017
