80,000 Lives a Year: The Case for a Congressional War on Cartels
Bodies hanging beneath underpasses. Government institutions systematically bribed. Political candidates assassinated by the dozens. Teenage boys lured into “job centers” only to be tortured and killed. Police ambushed and executed. This is not a description of my time fighting terrorists abroad; it is the grim and harrowing reality of life in Mexico today.
The crisis spreads beyond Mexico. The fentanyl trafficked into our country by the Mexican drug cartels and their Chinese partners kills around 80,000 Americans per year. That’s the equivalent of twenty-five 9/11 attacks every year. This reality led me to work with then-Speaker McCarthy to establish a task force to combat the cartels.
What exactly is a Congressional task force? They vary in size and scope, but typically a task force is a group of Members focused on a specific problem. We had no additional staff or resources, only a common goal. Despite severely limited resources, I personally traveled to eight locations across the country, three international trips including two visits to Mexico City, held almost 30 briefings, and led the task force to generate a comprehensive list of legislative proposals.
Our solutions varied in size and scope. In 2023, along with the incoming National Security Advisor for President Trump, Congressman Mike Waltz, I introduced the Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against cartels to empower the U.S. military to operate against cartels in coordination with Mexico. Our bipartisan task force largely agreed on the need for a “big” idea like this that vastly increases military cooperation with Mexico and takes the fight to the cartels. We also realized our laws do not adequately deter dealing fentanyl, and we worked on legislation to significantly increase penalties for cartel members and their facilitators, including local drug dealers, U.S. banks, and foreign governments complicit in their operations. We acknowledged the need to choke off the cartel’s weapon supply by focusing on southbound illicit flows across our southern border in addition to addressing northbound flows. We found that penalties on fentanyl precursor suppliers shipping product illegally to the US were nothing but a slap on the wrist, thus necessitating higher penalties to deter Chinese companies from falsifying shipping manifests.
These are only a portion of the solutions needed to combat the Mexican cartels. But if Congress is serious about aligning with President Trump’s promise to fight the cartels, we need significantly more congressional firepower. It will require professional staff, a travel and investigative budget, and substantially more focus from Congress than my limited task force can currently provide to pass legislation.
We need a Select Committee to Defeat the Mexican Drug Cartels.
What’s the difference?
Combating the Mexican drug cartels requires dismantling every aspect of their operations—from fentanyl precursor suppliers in China to the falsified manifests used to smuggle cargo into the United States. This means targeting precursor mixers, pill pressers, traffickers, lawyers, corrupt politicians, and bankers who sustain cartel activities. It means building up the right capabilities inside the government of Mexico, and deeper coordination between our military and theirs. It means increased intelligence collection on the cartels that must be funded and authorized. The list goes on. What might at first seem like straightforward legislative solutions quickly become a complex web of measures spread across no fewer than nine committees—an incredibly inefficient way to address an insurgency at our border.
The Select Committee to Defeat the Mexican Drug Cartels would act as a central coordination hub for this multi-faceted crisis, which means one committee of jurisdiction. Rather than navigating bills through committees with overlapping jurisdiction, a select committee would streamline the process, allowing us to swiftly move critical legislation to the floor, much like the Select Committee on China achieved with the TikTok CCP divestment last Congress.
Ignoring the Mexican cartels is not an option. Even one more year of preventable fentanyl overdoses in America is an unacceptable future, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on.
With new administrations in both the U.S. and Mexico—each with a record of taking decisive action against the cartels—the timing is right. The only question now is whether the House will step up and lead, which is why I am calling on Speaker Johnson to support my proposal to establish a Select Committee to Defeat the Mexican Drug Cartels.
The time to eliminate them is now.
Task Force Media
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Key Quote: “The immediate reaction from Democrats has been, ‘you can’t just go invading Mexico,’ and it’s like, stop being an ignoramus. That’s not what anybody’s talking about,” he said. “I envision the same kind of military intervention we use all over the world, where it’s entirely led by the host nation.” Crenshaw, like his colleague Waltz, wants a Plan Colombia-like playbook for Mexico."
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Key Quote: “I am proud to be leading this Congressional task force specifically focused on neutralizing the Mexican drug cartels,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw said. “The cartels have operational control over our southern border, facilitate and take advantage of our immigration crisis, and are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year with fentanyl. Until now, Congress has not taken this threat seriously nor have we shown the American people that we have a plan to deal with these transnational criminal organizations. This task force will rectify that by fully investigating cartel activity, producing policy recommendations, educating the American public, and bringing legislation to the House floor to wholistically target the drug cartels so they can no longer threaten our safety and sovereignty. I applaud Speaker McCarthy for recognizing the severity of this issue and thank him for the opportunity to lead this task force.”
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Key Quote: “When we talk about an authorization for the use of military force, it’s only a legal step to use our military — together with the Mexican Army — to fight the cartels. In Mexico, the Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) and the Navy are used against the cartels. The president doesn’t trust the police. There’s corruption in the police. So, if we’re going to help Mexico, it will be through a relationship between our militaries. It’s a legal step, simply so that we can cooperate with the Mexican Army, if they invite us. That’s the second step: López Obrador has to ask for help. I don’t understand why AMLO reacted like that against me. I never said that we were going to invade Mexico. That is nonsense."
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Key Quote: “I’ve been accused of all this crap by the president of Mexico himself, wrongly accused that I’m calling for unilateral action. Now look, if [the cartels] got so bad and [the] Mexicans just refused to work with us, you can’t take that kind of option off the table. But our first step in all of this is a much more serious military cooperation with the Mexican Armed Forces,” Crenshaw said. “We have to be very clear about that because the Mexican politicians will take our words and twist them and use it for political gain. And then they won’t go after the cartels the way we need them to.”
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Key Quote: “Look, I’m for the Mexican people. I’m for the American people. I’m against the cartels. I would think that the president of Mexico, ‘AMLO,’ would also be against the cartels.” “He’s clearly not against the cartels. He’s clearly defending the cartels at the detriment of his own people,” Crenshaw added. “You know, the cartels have killed a lot of Americans, whether [] through lacing drugs with fentanyl or just murdering them when they go down to get a medical appointment, but they’ve killed a lot more Mexicans.”