The death of a notorious drug lord by Mexican security forces on Sunday is emboldening GOP lawmakers who want to give the Trump administration more tools to take action against cartels outside of the United States.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is making a renewed push for the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act, a bill he is cosponsoring with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), that would empower a president to use privately armed mercenaries separate from the U.S. military to help root out cartel members on foreign soil without congressional approval.
While U.S. forces were not involved in the operation that killed drug lord Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” the U.S. did provide intelligence support.
“The president could basically send these folks down there and get our folks and be very efficient, I feel like, and you wouldn’t have to ask Congress for every bullet and every rifle,” Burchett said in a social media video Monday.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), a former Navy SEAL, urged Congress to “actually pay attention” to the violent retaliation from Oseguera’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel in the aftermath of his death, which in some cases has trapped Americans abroad, and suggested that lawmakers capitalize on the operation with new laws to bolster military, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts in Mexico.
In a post of his own, Crenshaw described Oseguera’s death as a sign that the Mexican government is heeding President Donald Trump’s calls to take on the cartels.
“We finally have a solid partner in the Mexican Government to work with. We are finally focusing huge intelligence collection efforts on the cartels,” he said, citing legislation he spearheaded authorizing better data collection on the cartels. “We are finally taking them on. It won’t be over soon. But it’s about time we started.”
MEXICAN SECURITY FORCES KILL LEADER OF JALISCO NEW GENERATION CARTEL ‘EL MENCHO’
It remains to be seen whether Republican leaders in Congress and Trump will bring new legislation to the floor, but countering Mexican cartels has been a focus of the administration since the president returned to office last year.
Trump designated Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations in a bid to clamp down on drug-smuggling last year and established a U.S.-military-led task force that played a key role in the Mexican raid against Oseguera over the weekend, according to Reuters.
