On Wednesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected “ interventionism ” after Donald Trump said he was working to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations .
López Obrador
said Mexico would take up the issue on Thursday and that he had asked Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard to lead talks.
“Cooperation, yes, intervention , no,” López Obrador said during his news conference when asked about Trump ’s comments.
On Tuesday, during a phone interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump said Mexican drug cartels “will be” designated as terrorist groups , adding he had been working on the process for 90 days.
George W. Bush
and Barack Obama previously considered implementing this measure but both decided against because of the implications this would have on the U.S. relationship with Mexico .
After six women and three children with dual Mexico-U. S. citizenship , from the LeBarón community, were massacred in Mexico , a growing number of conservatives in the United States have called for Mexican drug cartels to be classified as terrorist groups.
Last weekend, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said such a designation could, under U.S. law, enable the United States to act directly against the threat. On Wednesday, Ebrard said he was already in contact with U.S. counterparts and that he would focus on defending “ Mexico’s sovereignty .”
The U.S. State Department includes dozens of organizations on its terrorist groups list . Most of them are Islamists , separatists , or Marxist groups. In Latin America , Colombia ’s left-wing guerrilla and right-wing paramilitaries , both involved in drug trafficking , have appeared on the list.
Once a specific group is designated as a terrorist organization , it is illegal for people in the U.S. to support them and its members cannot enter the country and will be deported.
Experts
expect Trump to increase the pressure over Mexican drug cartels in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election , echoing his earlier use of tariff threats to persuade Mexico to halt illegal immigration from Central America.
Trump added that López Obrador, who he considers to be “a good man,” declined his offer to “let us go in and clean it out” the drug cartels from Mexico and said that at “some point something has to be done.”
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