Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter today to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to exhort the federal government to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
“As Governor of Texas, I urge you to take immediate action to combat the dangerous and deadly Mexican drug cartels,” Abbott wrote. “These cartels bring terror into our communities. They smuggle narcotics and weapons into the United States to fund their illegal enterprises.”
In addition to drug and weapon smuggling, Abbott also addressed the growing problem of human trafficking along the nation’s southern border: “They force women and children into human and sex trafficking—enriching themselves on the misery and enslavement of immigrants.”
Abbott further noted Mexican cartels are entering America to murder citizens.
“They murder innocent people, including women and children,” he argued. “These Mexican drug cartels are foreign terrorist organizations, and it is time for the federal government to designate them as such.”
The letter comes as a teacher and coach at a charter school near Charlotte, North Carolina, was killed last week in a shootout in Alamance County — about a two hours’ drive away — while trying to rob a drug cartel’s stash house.
Union Academy teacher Barney Dale Harris and his brother-in-law, Steven Alexander Stewart Jr., had tracked the activities of the Sinaloa cartel moving drugs from Mexico through North Carolina.
The two men traveled to a mobile home park in the Green Level community east of Burlington and broke into a home, where they lay in wait for the occupants, Johnson said.
When Alonso Beltran Lara came home, he was bound hand and foot and killed execution-style, with two shots to the back of his head, the sheriff said.
The sheriff blamed the shooting on the growth of illegal drugs flowing through Alamance County.
His office has seized 129 kilos of cocaine and nearly $2.3 million in cash since February.
“We’ve never seen that much cocaine in this county,” he said. “The quantity is getting bigger and bigger because, in my opinion, of our open southern border.”
