Former President Donald Trump said in a statement that if he’s successful in his bid for the presidency in 2024, he will order the U.S. military to crush Mexican drug cartels and show them “no mercy.”
While this week has been primarily about the vote for Speaker of the House, there is a lot of buzz around Biden’s plan to visit the border, a visit he has yet to make in his 2 years as President. Following that buzz, Trump is aiming to capitalize on a hot-button issue in the game of politics. The border was a big issue during the Trump administration, and it doesn’t seem to be a priority in the Biden White House.
“Expanding Title 42 to now include Venezuelans adds salt to an open wound while further eroding our asylum system that President Biden promised to restore,” said Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey in a statement. And even in his speech Thursday, Biden seemed to acknowledge the contradictions in his administration’s approach. “We have a patchwork system that simply doesn’t work as it should,” he said. “The actions we’re announcing today will make things better… but will not fix the border problem completely.”
In a video message on Thursday, Trump criticized Biden’s “open border policies,” calling them a “deadly betrayal of our nation,” and claimed they were to blame for the rise in drug-related fatalities among Americans.
In the video, President Trump claimed that dangerous drugs like fentanyl are flooding “across our wide-open border” and are “stealing hundreds of thousands of beautiful American lives.” Trump has previously advocated using military force to combat drug cartels operating south of the border, allegedly by including launching missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs.
According to Trump, 200,000 Americans have passed away from drug overdoses since Biden assumed office. The moment has come “for America to wage war on cartels,” Trump added, adding that drug traffickers are “waging war on America.”
While urging Congress to adopt legislation that would punish drug traffickers and human traffickers with the death penalty, Trump asserted that he would label cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and prevent them from using the global financial system.
“When I am president, it will be the policy of the United States to take down the cartels, just as we took down ISIS and the ISIS caliphate—and just as, unlike the situation we are in today, we had a very, very strong border,” Trump said.
In order to put a naval embargo on cartels and ensure that they cannot use regional waters to transport narcotics into the country, the former president declared that he would mobilize all necessary military resources, including the U.S. Navy.
Further, he would “order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.”
“Millions and millions of families and people are being destroyed. When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again,” the 45th President said.
“We did it once, and we did it better than anybody else.”
At a White House press conference on Thursday, Biden announced that the country would begin deporting unlawful border crossers from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. This action expands on prior efforts to thwart Venezuelan attempts to enter the United States unauthorizedly.
The Biden administration is expanding a parole program that permits 30,000 people from those four nations per month to enter the United States legally for two years and work.
Allowing those seeking entrance into the United States to make an appointment at a port of entry to begin a claim for asylum is another aspect of the new initiative.
The majority of asylum requests are ultimately denied, but because of a significant judicial backlog, most illegal immigrants must remain in the nation for years before their case is decided. Even when their claims are rejected, some persons are not deported. Along with sending extra judges and asylum officials to the border, the Biden administration is attempting to process cases more swiftly. The goal is to cut the processing time in the beginning from months to days.
“We can’t stop people from making the journey, but we can require that they come here in an orderly way under U.S. law”, according to Biden.
The administration also plans to increase funding for border communities impacted by the surge in illegal immigration. The actions “will make things better but will not fix the border problem completely,” Biden added, blaming Congress for not approving a plan he proposed to reform the immigration system.
Over the past week, border agents have encountered an average of 1,731 illegal aliens a day in a 268-mile stretch of the border known as the El Paso Sector, according to figures published by the city.
Trump usually takes every chance he gets to point out the failures of the Biden Administration, and this new video seems to be the latest example. While we won’t argue the merits, or lack thereof, of his new ‘campaign promise’, we will cover it when he announces he wants to wage a literal war on the Cartels.
