Mexican Cartels ‘Will Be Designated’ as Terrorist Organizations, Says President Trump

President Donald Trump told Bill O’Reilly he will designate some Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). His comments came during an interview released on Tuesday.

“The Mexican drug cartels kill more than 100,000 Americans every year by the importation of dangerous narcotics,” O’Reilly said to President Trump during an interview aired on O’Reilly.com. “Are you going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror groups?”

“They will be designated … I have offered him (the Mexican president) to let us go in and clean it out,” President Trump responded. “He, so far, has rejected the offer. But at some point, something has to be done.”

The president explained that the cartels have “unlimited money” from drug smuggling and human trafficking.

“I’ve been working on that for the last 90 days,” Trump stated. “You know, designation is not that easy, you have to go through a process, and we are well into that process.”

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The President told Breitbart News earlier this year that he was thinking about the designation. “We’re thinking about doing it very seriously. In fact, we’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” he said during an Oval Office interview.

“It’s psychological, but it’s also economic,” the President explained. “As terrorists — as terrorist organizations, the answer is yes. They are.”

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) told reporters on Monday that he would not accept a move to designate cartels as FTOs, Breitbart Texas reported. “We will never accept that, we are not ‘vendepatrias’ (nation sellers),” the Mexican president stated.

“On Monday morning, Lopez Obrador’s foreign relations minister Marcelo Ebrard called designations unnecessary and inconvenient, adding that the U.S. and Mexico have a healthy working relationship in fighting cartels,” Breitbart Texas journalist Ildefonso Ortiz and Breitbart Border/Cartel Chronicles project Director Brandon Darby wrote. “According to Ebrard, terrorist designations would give the U.S. the legal avenue to take direct action on cartels on Mexican soil.”

In March, U.S. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced legislation to direct the U.S. State Department to designate certain factions of Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Breitbart Texas reported at the time.

“Cartels are the problem and it is time we started acting like it,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said in a written statement. “My colleague Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) and I are asking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to conduct a review in order to designate these specific Mexican drug cartels Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).”