President Trump said he will designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations for the violence stemming from their trafficking of narcotics and humans.
“I don’t want to say what I’m going to do, but they will be designated,” Trump told former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday when asked about the possibility of targeting the cartels with drone strikes.
”I’ve been working on that for the last 90 days. You know designation is not that easy. You have to go through a process, and we’re well into that process,” he said.
Trump offered to help the country “wipe” the drug cartels “off the face of the earth” in early November after a family with U.S. citizenship was massacred in northern Mexico.
“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels,” Trump tweeted at the time.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejected Trump’s offer for U.S. military support in combating the cartels, saying, “It’s not in agreement with our convictions. The worst thing is war.”
Mexico’s foreign ministry issued a statement Tuesday saying it would seek a high-level meeting with State Department officials to address the possible designation.
