Secretary of State Anthony Blinken during a news conference March 20 in Washington.KEVIN DIETSCH (Getty Images via AFP)
Drug cartels control parts of Mexico. This was discussed by United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a hearing before a US Senate committee this Wednesday, where he also pointed out that citizens are the main victims of insecurity in this country.
Blinken’s comments come at a time when US-Mexico ties have been rising after two US citizens were killed and another injured in Matamoros, northern Mexico, earlier this month. Representatives of the most radical wing of the Republican Party are demanding that the cartels be reclassified as terrorist groups to justify US military action on the territory of their neighboring country, an idea the Biden administration categorically rules out and which has drawn the ire of the Republican government of the President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.
In his Wednesday appearance before the Senate Budget Committee, Blinken was asked by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham if the cartels, rather than the Mexican government, control parts of Mexico. “I think it’s fair to say yes,” the foreign minister replied. Again questioned by Graham about the effectiveness of anti-trust policies, the head of US diplomacy felt it was necessary “to do more” to combat this violence.
Blinken also noted that Mexico has intercepted “record levels” of fentanyl, an opioid whose use caused the deaths of 110,236 people in the United States last year; Working with the United States, it has dismantled laboratories producing this synthetic substance and arrested “dozens of leaders of criminal organizations” in the last year. According to the foreign minister, the two countries are working together “very closely” to combat drug trafficking. “We did several things to focus intensely on this issue with Mexico. We work very closely together,” he added.
One of the ways the United States can work with Mexico to fight drug trafficking, Blinken says, is to quickly outfit border guards with cutting-edge technology to detect the presence of the substance. As he recalled, 96% of the volume entering the US from the neighboring country goes through official border posts. The head of US diplomacy also wanted to point out that fentanyl is a problem that is “on the rise” in Mexico and is leaving more and more victims there.
The Secretary of State also noted that designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations would not provide the US government with “new tools” to combat this scourge. Lindsay Graham, the senator who questioned him on Mexico, is one of the proponents of the measure.
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At the White House, President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, ruled out the idea again this Wednesday at her daily press briefing. “Labeling these cartels as (terrorist organizations) would not give us any additional authority,” he stressed. Treasury Department economic sanctions are a more appropriate way, he said. “Drug dealers can’t use your family or friends like this to hide their assets out of reach of the US government,” he added.
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