A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on international drug cartels emphasized that the organizations are effectively engaged in sophisticated terrorism.
The hearing, “The Thin Blue Line Protecting America from the Cartels,” featured three witnesses from law enforcement: Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration in California; Jason Stevens, special agent in charge of the El Paso Homeland Security Investigations in Texas; and Jose Perez, assistant director of the criminal investigative division of the FBI.
“This is who we’re up against, paramilitary cartel with global reach, willing to kill families and surveil U.S. personnel on our own soil. This isn’t just crime; it’s terror,” Allen explained.
“What we face today in Southern California is a full-scale infiltration by foreign criminal empires, the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Paramilitary organizations with global supply chains, corporate-level logistics, and battlefield tactics,” Allen added.
The DEA field division leader then articulated a recent anecdote about the power and presence of the cartels in the U.S.
“Just weeks ago, we raided a cartel stash site in downtown Los Angeles, a warehouse not far from our own office. Inside, painted across the wall from floor to ceiling, was a mural of El Mencho, CJNG’s most ruthless leader. Clad in a bulletproof vest and flanked by the cartel’s insignia, a shrine not hidden in the jungle or some remote compound, but right in the heart of America’s second-largest city,” Allen recounted. “El Mencho” is the nickname of Ruben Oseguera-Cervantes, the cartel’s founder and leader.
“The message was clear: ‘We’re here, and we are among you,’” Allen said.
Allen went on to underscore the fact that the cartels are affecting the most vulnerable people in American society.
“Behind every investigation, every arrest, every seizure, there is a child who should still be alive, a mother who should still be smiling, and a community that should still be whole,” he said.
One of the other witnesses concurred, explaining that the stakes were so much higher than simply letting drug addicts self-destruct.
“These networks are not just trafficking drugs. They’re trafficking violence, destabilization, human suffering, and death,” HSI’s Stevens acknowledged, adding that he supports President Donald Trump’s executive order 14157, which designated certain international cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
“This designation allows us to treat them like such [terrorist groups] and to act decisively to be able to freeze their assets, cut off finances, disrupt their logistics, and prosecute both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens who provide them with material support,” he noted.
The law enforcement officer also described how a criminal organization had built a tunnel between Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, that had lighting and ventilation, and was large enough for two men to walk side by side through it.
The FBI’s Perez discussed some of the accomplishments of the bureau in recent days.
“Just this month, an FBI Atlanta investigation in partnership with DEA led to the largest fentanyl seizure in Georgia’s history, valued at $9 million with the arrest of a convicted felon. That’s enough fentanyl, seized in that case, to kill four times the state’s population,” he noted.
In Newark, New Jersey, “30 people are now facing federal charges for narcotics- and firearms-trafficking-related offenses, [which] are related to fentanyl and crack cocaine,” the special agent continued.
