Mexican Drug Cartels and Their Chinese Enablers Under Close Scrutiny

Seized fentanyl pills after the arrest of three distributors from Sinaloa, Mexico. U.S. Attorney's Office

Commentary

The U.S. Department of Justice has identified Chinese nationals and companies that have been directly aiding the Mexican drug cartels, which begs the question of their status if the cartels are designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

One of the executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 is called “Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” This order was a presidential direction to add the Mexican drug cartels to the Foreign Terrorist Organization List.

The scourge of fentanyl traces directly from the cartels and is killing thousands of Americans per month. Combined drug overdoses in the United States are achieving a death rate of around 120,000 a year. At this rate, the level of 407,000 Americans killed in World War II will be surpassed within a couple of years without action to address the climbing fentanyl casualty rate.

In the executive order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was given the lead to develop the final list of groups to be designated as terrorist groups. The State Department is reported to have created a tentative list of eight groups to be placed on the formal terrorist list.

On “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast last month, Rubio said that Mexico has significant amounts of ungoverned territory.

“They’re controlled by drug cartels,” he said. “They are the most powerful force on the ground, and they are plowing into the United States … They’re facilitating illegal migration, but they are also bringing in fentanyl and deadly drugs to our country.

“That’s a national security threat, and that needs to stop.”

CCP’s ‘Unrestricted Warfare’

In April 2023, a U.S. court named four Chinese nationals who allegedly collaborated with the Mexican cartels on fentanyl production. Kun Jiang, Yonghao Wu, Yaqin Wu, and Huatao Yao were identified as defendants and the Chinese suppliers of fentanyl precursors to the cartels in Mexico.

They sourced the precursor chemicals from their companies’ factories in China and delivered these chemicals to the cartels in Mexico with the full knowledge that the intent was to finalize the fentanyl into distributable form directly into the United States, according to prosecutors.

Doug Livermore, vice president of the Board of Directors for the Special Operations Association of America and also a Special Operations veteran, was interviewed for this article on his view of the intersection of the Chinese and the drug cartels.

“The Mexican cartels are enabled and supplied by Chinese-based criminal organizations, including Chinese companies that knowingly provide fentanyl and precursor chemicals to the cartels to produce the drugs that are pumped into the United States and Chinese financial institutions that facilitate the transfer of money into and out of our country to expand these criminal networks,” he said.

“The Chinese Communist Party’s [CCP’s] embrace of the doctrine of ‘unrestricted warfare,’ which clearly calls for the use of the illicit narcotics trade as a tool for undermining strategic competitors—specifically the United States—demonstrates the clear strategy behind the CCP’s policies enabling the Mexican cartels.”

US Special Forces Train Mexican Marines

A significant event has recently started as U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachments from the Seventh Special Forces Group have arrived in Mexico to begin the Foreign Internal Defense (FID) training program of Mexican Marines.

According to Sen. Alejandro Moreno Cardenas, president of the Mexican Senate’s Naval Ministry Commission, the Mexican Senate has approved the entry of members of the U.S. Army’s Seventh Special Forces Group (Airborne) into the country starting this week, and the training takes place from Feb. 17 to March 30 at the Luis Carpizo naval facility in the state of Campeche. The United States will come fully armed to train the Mexican Navy’s Infantería de Marina (marine infantry) in conventional and unconventional combat techniques.

This is a very significant event and a milestone. This is the first instance of publicly acknowledged Special Operator training focused on tactics, techniques, and procedures that will help the Mexican Marines take on the cartels. Even more interesting, there have been reports of U.S. spy aircraft flying off the West Coast of Mexico.

The FID training, combined with possible intelligence flights, gives the indications of what is called Advance Force Operations, which is a Department of Defense operational term that refers to the preparation of the battle space in advance of a military strike.

Authorization for Use of Military Force

The process to formally designate the Mexican drug cartels (and other groups such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13) as Terrorist Organizations is a significant step on the journey to taking decisive military action inside of Mexico against the leadership, training, and logistics facilities of the cartels and their production of fentanyl.

After the Terrorist Organization designation process is complete, the next step is the congressional passage of an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz advocated for an AUMF against the cartels when he was a congressman.

Once Congress passes an AUMF, the drug cartels and those supporting, enabling, or working with the cartels could also be potential targets of the AUMF.

China expert Gordon Chang said in a recent interview on “The National Security Hour” podcast that fentanyl is “mixed by Chinese technicians” for the cartels. Chang also noted that Chinese travel unguarded in the cartel-controlled areas of Northern Mexico, which means they are under the protection of the cartels because of their indispensable roles in the production of deadly fentanyl for distribution into the United States.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.