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--:-- John Bickley: After years of destructive open border policies during the Biden-Harris administration, Congressman Dan Crenshaw has been tasked with combating the growing influence of Mexican cartels and the illegal flow of fentanyl at our southern border. We sat down with the Navy SEAL veteran to hear his plan to build a strong partnership with Mexico in order to dismantle the cartels and secure America's border.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Daily Wire, Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's November 30th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now to discuss his plan to secure our southern border and dismantle the Mexican drug cartels is Congressman Dan Crenshaw.
--:-- John Bickley: Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Thank you for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: So last year, you were tapped by the speaker to lead the task force to combat Mexican drug cartels. First, how were you chosen?
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Well, because this was on the heels of passing H.R. to, you know, our flagship border security bill. And I had to complain to the speaker that there was nothing in that bill that dealt with cartels and that we had no real plan to deal with cartels from a legislative perspective. And that was the point I brought up to him and a demand I had that we either do add it to H.R. 2 or figure something else out.
--:-- John Bickley: And from that conversation came the idea of a task force where a task force can be many things in Congress, but it's usually a bipartisan group of members that use their time to research a very specific policy objective, in this case, cartels. And that's how it started.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: And what recommendations are you making for U.S. policy to combat cartel influence both domestically and abroad going forward?
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, I mean, some of these things have already been done. Others still need to be accomplished. And a lot of it really depends on Mexico itself. That's one of the bigger lessons we've learned from all this research.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: To give you examples of things we've accomplished, well, reauthorizing FISA was a huge one. During that reauthorization, we not only made a lot of changes and reforms to FISA that would prevent another crossfire hurricane, which I know a lot of people are concerned about, but we also added some capabilities. You might be surprised to hear that we actually tie our own hands behind our back from intelligence collection using FISA against entities like cartel affiliates and Chinese companies that make the precursors for fentanyl. We don't even allow it. We don't allow ourselves to collect on that.
--:-- John Bickley: So we changed that with the Pfizer authorization, basically added a fourth category to the three categories of collection that currently exists. And that fourth category would be anyone involved in creation of synthetic opioids.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: So as before, we couldn't collect on a broker or a banker or a driver for the cartels. And we couldn't collect on a company in China, you know, willingly and creating precursors and illegally labeling, shipping them to the U.S. and Mexico to make fentanyl that kills Americans. So now we can.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, what do we want to do? Well, there's a variety of things that are, frankly, low-hanging fruit. I mean, if you mislabel, for instance, air cargo purposefully, and you're actually caught, and it's difficult enough to catch a CBP as an entire task force dedicated to that in LA, it's only a $5,000 fine. So, this is barely even a scratch on the cartels or the companies facilitating them.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: So here's one quick law change: make that $5 million or, you know, something like that. Easy ones. Sometimes it's just about funding certain agencies like HSI that are doing very specific work on tracking the money flows that the cartels use. You know, they're underfunded. They don't have enough licenses bought for a specific program that tracks Bitcoin, for instance. Sometimes it's just as easy as giving them that extra money so that they can buy the extra licenses and hire the extra analysts.
--:-- John Bickley: Looking at the bigger picture, though, what you really need is a deal with Mexico. Mexico is not Colombia, but we do need to make the analogy because they're in very similar situations, just in different timeframes. Mexico's in the same situation as Colombia was back in the 90s.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Colombia was a near-failed state. You had the narco wars with the Menegin cartel and then the Cali cartel, which devolved into the guerrilla wars, which continue to this day, but to far lesser extent, far lesser extent. I know from personal experience because I went to high school in Colombia. I was there during the height of the Civil War against the guerrillas, the FARC, the ELN.
--:-- John Bickley: So the difference is the Colombians welcome American security cooperation in with open arms, and they always have. We have a very tight relationship with the Colombians. And as a result, you've seen a ton of improvement over the last 30 years.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Mexico has always given America the stiff arm. And that dates back to memories from the 1840s and from the Mexican-American War. While for us Americans, that history means nothing to us, it means a lot to them. At least they say it does politically.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, you ask the average Mexican, I don't think it means all that much. I think your average Mexican would welcome Navy SEALs helping Mexican military special forces go after cartels.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: So what you really need is a plan Colombia, but a plan Mexico. And you can't do that until the administration of Mexico actually agrees to it. So, you know, we started that conversation when we introduced the authorized use of military force against cartels, God, it seems like years ago now at this point.
--:-- John Bickley: The idea being that, you know, we want to signal from Congress that we want to give the legal authority to the president to actually take this on with the U.S. military. Now, does he really even need the authority? Not really sure he does because we'd be operating alongside of an ally, Mexico, which the president has authority to help and to aid. You know, we already do in many ways, but we want to make that authority clearer and we want Mexico to ask for it.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: So there a lot of things we could do from up here and we have a list of legislative items but in the end what we really hopeful about is the new administration of Mexico. They took power in October and I believe they will be a lot more pragmatic in allowing us to help them rid their country of what is effectively the most powerful terrorist insurgency in the world.
--:-- John Bickley: And I mean that wholeheartedly. Compared to ISIS and al-Qaeda, they're by far the most powerful. They're integrated into every level of government. They have every weapon they can imagine. They have all the money possible. They are really, really powerful. And that Mexico needs our help to defeat them.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: So you're hopeful that Mexico's regime will be more amenable to this. And then I assume that you have more confidence that a Trump administration will be more effective at this than the Biden administration.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, I have a lot more confidence. I mean, look, Biden didn't try to stop anything. You know, our agencies across the board, from the FBI to CBP to HSI to the CIA, have done everything they can. And I'm not going to say that Biden ever tried to stop them. But rhetorically, Biden never talks about this. He's never talked about the cartels, a really fentanyl test.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: And you know why? Because there's an obvious nexus from the cartels to the border, which is a touchy issue for Democrats. Trump doesn't have this problem. So Trump can easily say that he wants to go up to the cart. He has said it. He's put Tom Homan, a former director of ICE, as his borders are. And what is he even talking about constantly? Cartels.
--:-- John Bickley: So, yeah, there's a ton of political appetite to make this happen. And so it's our job in Congress to make it happen. The task force is a small way to do that. I'm formally calling on us to create a select committee to actually combat the problem.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Because when you're looking at legislation, here's a quick lesson in civics. We have all of these different committees of jurisdiction. It's a lot more complicated than you think. Even the simplest of bills can have three committees of jurisdiction. So it takes a long time to get things done. A select committee solves that problem. We did the same thing with select committee on China. That's how you get a difficult bill like the TikTok ban through it.
--:-- John Bickley: So a select committee, I think, is the right avenue to do what we need to do, do what we said we would do, and help Trump fulfill his promises.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Now, many talk about the cartel's operations in Mexico, but we're hearing a little bit more now about their operation and the extent of it here in the U.S. What do we know there? How extensively are they operating on U.S. soil?
--:-- John Bickley: It's a great question, and it kind of depends on how you define operating. Now, are there card-carrying Sinaloa members just on U.S. soil? It doesn't really work that way. They're not that stupid. The way it does work is this entire business has become very much a market. And in any market, there are people who do certain things and specialize in certain things.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: You're not going to see Sinaloa members as the drug dealers on the streets of whatever city you're living in. You're going to see local gang members who grew up there on the streets, who have made deals with cartels and who take their shipments from the cartels. The cartels are ultimately facilitators, and they hire whatever facilitator they need in whatever area they need.
--:-- John Bickley: So the answer to your question is kind of yes and no. Like, they have very deep ties because they're the bosses of these people operating in any location in the U.S. But a lot of the traffickers coming across are probably U.S. citizens.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: So it's a mix of both. But on the other hand, you know, I can point you to a million of my friends who my own property on the southern border and they have you know they have night cameras up because they're looking for game and, you know, hogs and things like that. But once in a while, what they see is a bunch of people in military uniforms patrolling across. These are the types who want to get away from CBP, not turn themselves in.
--:-- John Bickley: And you really got to wonder what they're doing. Those are the gotaways we talked about. We're talking about the border. There's almost 2 million gotaways under the Biden administration. And if you're trying to get away from Border Patrol, there's something really wrong because we all know what Biden's policies are. Most people have an incentive to actually just turn themselves into Border Patrol because they know they'll be let loose and paroled. They'll get a free ticket anywhere.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: So if you're actually trying to evade Border Patrol, you're trafficking something, you have weapons, you're a criminal. There's something different about you. But that's the truth. So to answer your question, it's complicated. It's a mix of both.
--:-- John Bickley: For you personally, with your work on this, what's your next steps in the coming weeks and months?
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Well, I want to convince the speaker that we need a select committee because of jurisdictional issues. So that streamlines our ability to actually get some legislation done. Second of all, it actually gives us some staff. I've been working on this cartel task force. It's just me. It's literally just me. I had one DEA agent tasked, and then it's just me and my staff. It's just not enough.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm on two other committees. I have a one-year-old. And I've still done a dozen trips across the U.S. to try and figure out what we're doing first against the cartels and then figure out what needs to be done. We've actually managed to do quite a bit with no resources. Imagine what we can do with just some resources, which is what a select committee gives you.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Final question. This is not about Mexican cartels per se, but it is about gang-related activity here in the U.S. Trend de Aragua is all over the news for very good reason. The latest is that they're operating in at least 16 states. What do we know about what they're doing and what actions are we taking to crack down on them?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, we know probably not enough. This has obviously hit the news really recently and come to everybody's attention very recently happening under our nose. And this is a little bit out of my expertise. What I deal with is Sinaloa, the Jalisco cartels, Mexican affiliated cartels. Obviously, there's these gangs. Are they affiliated with cartels? Probably.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: I mean, again, it's like I said, criminals look for other criminals to work together with. That's how all of this works. Everybody owns a different part of the system. The Colombians producing cocaine in Colombia aren't Sinaloa, but a Sinaloa operative has a meeting with them every once in a while. They give them a call. They put it in orders. Take a business. So, you know, they're a Fortune 500 company, but they're also an insurgency.
--:-- John Bickley: And all of these elements are part of that insurgency. And, you know, I don't know how to answer your question on Tenderau exactly because that's really a question for the FBI. We're still looking into on how much they understand this threat and what we're doing about it. But it is top of the list, top of the mind for the FBI and law enforcement in particular.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: I do know that.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate you guys.
--:-- Dan Crenshaw: Yeah, thanks for doing this.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw. And this has been a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
