Rep. Crenshaw Pushes GOP To ‘Target The Drug Cartels’ In Border Bill

ANALYSIS – House Republican leaders are set to put their signature border security bill to a vote today, Thursday. It is strategically timed to coincide with the expiration of Title 42 tonight at midnight.

They have worked for months to negotiate the border and immigration package but were still running into last-minute opposition on the day before the vote and have worked furiously behind the scenes to resolve the impasse.

The main problem?

Some GOP members are not convinced the House bill goes far enough to target Mexican drug cartels and that one cartel provision may actually backfire.

Former Navy SEAL Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, has been vocal about this issue. He said earlier that the current bill had “glaring problems” due to a lack of action detailed in the bill against Mexican drug cartels. (RELATED: Is Mexico's President Working With US To Stop Deadly Fentanyl Wave?)

Crenshaw supports a bill he titled “Declaring War on the Cartels Act” and agrees with the more hawkish Republicans about using U.S. military force against cartels in Mexico.

Crenshaw and several other GOP members also have an issue over language that asks the secretary of Homeland Security to produce a “study” to determine whether Mexican cartels are a “foreign terrorist organization [FTO].”

This, despite Crenshaw saying that “We must take the cartels seriously and deter them and target them the same way we do terrorists” when he first introduced his bill aimed at the cartels.

“That is the only way to win,” he added.

But there is a big difference in treating them like terrorists and officially labelling them terrorists.

While many have argued that labeling the cartels as FTOs would add numerous new legal and financial options to fight the deadly drug groups, these Republicans see an illegal migrant Trojan Horse.

They want that provision stripped from the bill since they believe it would then create a new “credible fear” claim that alleged asylum seekers would exploit, and Team Biden would use those claims to open the border floodgates even more.

“It's stupid, it's counterproductive,” Crenshaw said of the FTO language.

On May 8, Crenshaw tweeted his opposition and reasons:

And Crenshaw and the other members' concerns seem to finally be getting a hearing by the GOP leadership.

CNN reports that:

House Republican leaders are moving ahead with a vote on their border security bill after agreeing to make last-minute changes to the package in order to win over GOP holdouts.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy huddled with key lawmakers in House Majority Whip Tom Emmer's office on Wednesday afternoon, where they walked members through their concerns and hammered out language designed to address lingering concerns over provisions related to E-verify and Mexican cartels.

House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green told CNN:

I think we addressed that in conference this morning to everybody. We brought up how the asylum laws are written now and made pretty clear that it's a government that has to be oppressing that person or threatening that person and we also put in this language that says nothing in this would construe the asylum is granted because they get named as foreign terrorist organizations.

But there is still the question of using U.S. military force against the cartels and the Mexican president's threat to interfere in U.S. elections. (RELATED: Mexican President Vows To Launch US Election Interference Campaign Targeting Republicans)

Earlier this year, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) whipped up Mexican nationalist fervor against U.S. Republicans when he claimed the idea of using military force against the cartels showed a lack of respect for Mexico's independence and sovereignty.

AMLO went on to outrageously threaten that he would use Mexican American voters in the United States to campaign against Republicans in Congress who advocate for any U.S. use of military force.

Crenshaw responded quickly with a House resolution that condemned AMLO for political interference in U.S. elections.

That's still a simmering issue.

Meanwhile, let's see how the final vote goes. But even if it passes in the House, it has an impossibly uphill battle in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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