(NewsNation) — Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw has joined the growing list of lawmakers calling for military action against Mexican cartels, and he hopes he can get his Democratic colleagues on board.
The Republican introduced legislation earlier this year that would authorize use of military force against the main importers of fentanyl into the United States: The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.
Speaking about the legislation Thursday on NewsNation’s “CUOMO,” Crenshaw lamented what he said is a propensity by Democrats to combating cartels with immigration policy.
“I would tell Biden, ‘This is a huge win for you if you would just take this up,'” Crenshaw said. “This is literally protecting tens of thousand of Americans who are dying from fentanyl, being poisoned because the street drugs they’re used to taking are being laced with this stuff.”
Instead of military action, the White House has emphasized its diplomatic efforts to coordinate with Mexico’s government on shutting down cartel operations. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted the Treasury Department has taken a series of actions sanctioning various Mexican companies and individuals connected to the drug trade in recent months.
Crenshaw also took aim at Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In a video message posted to Twitter on Wednesday, Crenshaw asked Lopez Obrador, “Why do you protect the cartels?”
Lopez Obrador pushed back Thursday, telling the U.S. it should take care of its “social decay” that he said is driving fentanyl addiction.
“We are not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory, much less that a government’s armed forces intervene,” López Obrador said during a news conference, according to Reuters.
Unlike some of his other Republican colleagues, Crenshaw does not support designating cartels as terrorist organizations. Doing so, he said, would make millions of Mexican nationals eligible for asylum and worsen the influx of migrants.
“That makes our immigration problem 100 times worse than it already is,” Crenshaw said. “The terror designation only gives you so much extra authority. It’s a bit of a headline more than anything else.”
Phil Mudd agrees with Crenshaw’s assessment. The former CIA and FBI official said if the United States wants to succeed in gutting the cartels, it must find a way to cooperate with the Mexican government.
“As soon as the Mexican president says, ‘No I’m not interested,’ obviously we’ve got a problem,” Mudd said.
He called Sen. Lindsey Graham’s idea to have the U.S. military unilaterally go into Mexico “nonsense.”
“He wants to seem like a tough guy. Good luck,” Mudd said. “Look at what happened in Vietnam, look at what happened in Afghanistan, look at the rise of ISIS when we destroyed the Iraqi military and moved in unilaterally, and you tell me as an American citizen, as a taxpayer, ‘That’s really a solution I want.’ If you don’t have the support of the local population, you lose.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.