The Washington Examiner recently sat down with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) to discuss his campaign against Mexican drug cartels and drug smuggling operations at the U.S.-Mexico border. This transcript has been lightly edited for length and readability.
Washington Examiner: You’ve been really vocal about Mexican drug cartels and the fentanyl they’re bringing into the U.S. lately. This is familiar to Texans. For you, was there a particular story that’s made you so zealous about this issue?
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Rep. Dan Crenshaw: No, not really. I’ve been looking at this for months, years on the border issue.
WEX: I know you’ve introduced legislation, and you want to make drug cartels a military target. Tell me about that.
DC: Yeah, an [Authorization for Use of Military Force] is just a legal requirement if you’re going to use the resources of the U.S. military. Now, how you use them is a totally different question. That’s up to the president. But for the president to even have that option, he needs congressional authority in the form of an AUMF. The same AUMF authority we use to target ISIS and al Qaeda and all that. That’s all it is.
WEX: Do you think you will have success with that?
DC: I don’t know yet. I don’t know why Democrats wouldn’t jump all over this opportunity because it allows them to at least appear strong on a serious issue without having to talk about the border or immigration. Now, their problem, politically, is this is their own fault. They link, in their own heads, the cartel and the border. And, of course, they are linked somewhat. But as far as the political lightning rod that it is, it doesn’t have to be that way.
WEX: I know you’ve also proposed some additional legislation. Are any of those getting traction?
DC: Sure. There’s two in particular that I’ve proposed:
[In addition to the AUMF], one is “Declaring War on the Cartels Act,” which is, ironically, not the AUMF, but a series of legal authorities — heightened sentencing, increased ability to go after their finances, sanctions on Mexican officials that aid and abet the cartels. We basically took language from whatever legal authority would be derived from a [Foreign Terrorist Organization] designation without calling them an FTO designation. I’ve said very forcefully, Republicans need to stop — and I know it sounds good, it sounds spicy, it makes for good clickbait — when you want to designate them as terrorists, but there’s not an obvious effect that that has, except that you’ve then created millions of legal asylum-seekers. There’s a big risk of that, and I’ve heard people kind of “Well, I don’t think it’s interpreted that way.” Well, I bet you this administration would interpret it that way. So, people need to think of the consequences.
I’ve asked some of my colleagues who are supportive of that, of designating cartels as official terrorist organizations, “What do you think you’re gaining here, and is it worth the huge risk of the second-, third-order consequences of mass asylum claims that are now legal?”
WEX: Are those Democrats typically doing that?
DC: On the FTO designation?
WEX: Yes.
DC: Oh no, no, no, that’s only Republicans. Democrats will never do that. That’s the other thing. It has no chance of even going anywhere. I tell my colleagues, “Stop looking for headlines.” I know it’s like, it’s kind of clickbaity: “Call them terrorists!” Of course they’re terrorists, but if you designate them that way legally, you’ve created an asylum problem, and I don’t want that.
WEX: As an aside, you came into this from the military: Are you finding that a lot of people in Congress are there for the clickbait rather than there to represent their constituents?
DC: [Laughs] Of course.
WEX: Is it disappointing, or are you not surprised by that anymore?
DC: Of course it’s disappointing.
The people have to hold them accountable. The problem is “the people” are the ones who click the bait. So as long as there is an incentive to keep acting that way, to keep acting disingenuous, saying things you know aren’t true but you know it will get you clickbait — well, that’s the people’s fault. They need to stop clicking it. I tell people that all the time. If you want more honest politicians, stop rewarding the dishonesty. A lot of politicians will tell you what you want to hear. You think that’s truth. But when I tell you the truth, you get mad. There’s a lot of issues like that. This isn’t necessarily one of them in this particular case. This terrorist disagreement is kind of a minor one. I’m just … we all think they’re actual terrorists, of course.
My goal is to get Democrats on board and have reasonable solutions. And what I’d tell President Biden is, “Look, I’m doing you such a huge favor here. You can either be with me on this and look strong on this issue, which would be good for you electorally, or use it as leverage: Play good cop, bad cop.” I’ll be bad cop. Biden can be good cop. Get the Mexican government to actually do something.
WEX: What would be a marker of success for you? What could happen for you to think we’re making progress on this?
DC: It’s not out of the question to see the drug cartels stop doing fentanyl production because they start to get scared of increased attention on that particular business model.
WEX: It’s not clear to me, maybe it’s clear to you from your border visits: Lacing drugs with fentanyl seems malicious. What’s the purpose if it kills drug cartel clientele?
DC: Here would be my understanding is that it makes whatever it’s laced with, from a high perspective, from a “getting high” perspective, more addictive. So, the [cartel] is certainly aware of the risks, but they’ve got so many buyers, what do they care if they kill a few of them? I think that’s how they look at it. From a business model perspective, so you’re selling Xanax, this particular fentanyl-laced Xanax makes them feel way more awesome, and so they want to go back to that one as opposed to the normal Xanax. And it costs the drug dealer very, very little to put the fentanyl in it. So from the business perspective, that’s [why] they do it.
But you know, is it so much more profitable that the cartel would want to risk us going to war with them? Maybe not. And that’s where I say, look, the rhetoric alone can be effective. And I think that’s a possibility, but it needs to be bipartisan. This is what’s so frustrating. I tell Democrats, this doesn’t actually mean that we need to roll the tanks into Mexico, it just means that if we showed strength from a bipartisan perspective and gave the president the authority and he signed it, I bet you they’d stop producing it right away. Look how scared they were recently. They turned in their own guys at Montemorelos [Editor’s note: This occurred following the kidnapping of four Americans, two of whom were killed, in Mexico earlier this month.] because they were like “Agh, there’s a lot of attention on us. We do not want this.” They are scared of us. So, I don’t know why we’re so scared.
WEX: Following that fatal kidnapping of Americans, you addressed Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a video clip in Spanish and posted it on Twitter, and he responded to you.
DC: Regarding AMLO, he threatened to campaign against me recently, which would be a huge boon to my [drug cartel] campaign.
I guess I just live rent-free in his head. It’s kinda funny because he’s the president. I think he needs to represent his people and not the cartels. I think the Mexican people generally are fed up with the cartels and their violence and their politicians’ inability to deal with it.
WEX: What did you make of the fact that he didn’t agree with you at all?
DC: He doesn’t even acknowledge that it’s a serious issue for his own people.
WEX: On that issue, a lot of Americans don’t quite realize how serious this is at the border. I know you’ve been there. Have you had any luck persuading Democrats that this is not just a “Texas” problem?
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DC: Like I said, there’s a lot of Democrats — think of your typical national security-minded Democrat. They’re not on the border, but they’re receptive to this. Texas Rep. Vincente Gonzales, [a Democrat who does represent the border], he’s been calling the cartels terrorists forever. I’m really trying to get him to get on this bill. But others are also [persuadable], and they’re not on border towns. It’s not going to be impossible, and that’s why I don’t want to make it partisan. I’m not bashing the president on this. I want to give Democrats the chance to come to the right place and work with us on this.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Texas who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
