Some GOP candidates propose acts of war against Mexico to stop fentanyl. Experts say that won’t work

MIAMI – Ron DeSantis desires suspected drug smugglers on the U.S.-Mexico border to be shot useless. Nikki Haley guarantees to ship American particular forces into Mexico. Vivek Ramaswamy has accused Mexico’s chief of treating drug cartels as his “sugar daddy” and says that if he’s elected president, “there will be a new daddy in town.”

Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 nomination and lengthy the one who has formed his birthday celebration’s rhetoric at the border, has frequently blamed Mexico for issues within the United States and guarantees new makes use of of army drive and covert motion if he returns to the White House.

Many of the GOP presidential candidates say they’d perform possible acts of war against Mexico in reaction to the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. More than 75,000 other folks within the U.S. died ultimate yr from overdoses of man made opioids, an annual determine greater than 20 occasions upper than a decade in the past.

The candidates’ antagonism towards Mexico is welcomed through some households who’ve misplaced family members to fentanyl and feature argued that Washington has now not executed sufficient to deal with the worst drug disaster in U.S. historical past. But analysts and nonpartisan mavens warn that army drive isn’t the solution and as an alternative fuels the racism and xenophobia that undermine efforts to stop drug trafficking.

“You’ve got politicking on this side. And then on the Mexican side of the border, you’ve got a president who is turning a blind eye to what’s going on in Mexico and who has completely gutted bilateral collaboration with the United States,” said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013. “That’s a very combustible mixture.”

Andrea Thomas’ daughter died at age 32 after taking half of a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl that looked like her prescription pills for abdominal pain. Thomas started the foundation Voices for Awareness in Grand Junction, Colorado, to raise the alarm about fentanyl.

Thomas says people she knows are interested in what the candidates are proposing and feel that President Joe Biden’s administration has not properly responded to the crisis. In a letter to the presidential candidates, Thomas and an assembly of other groups urge the politicians to do “all that can be done” to stop the manufacturing and smuggling of the drug.

“This drug is like no drug we have ever seen before,” she said. “We need some strong measures. We have no more time to waste.”

Democrats also face i mmense political pressure on border issues heading into next year’s election. The White House has funded national programs to reduce fentanyl overdoses and sanctioned Chinese companies blamed for importing the chemicals used to make the drug.

Mexico has failed to address its problem with fentanyl production and trafficking. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador repeatedly denies his country is producing the synthetic opioid despite enormous evidence to the contrary.

Border agents seized nearly 13 tons (12,000 kilograms) of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border between September 2022 and August, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

At the second GOP primary debate late last month, candidates reiterated that they would use military forces to go after drug gangs in Mexico.

“As commander in leader, I’m going to use the U.S. army to pass after the Mexican drug cartels,” mentioned DeSantis, the Florida governor. He has promised that other folks suspected of smuggling medicine around the southern border would finally end up “stone cold dead.” That raises the possibility of border brokers being approved to shoot other folks on sight prior to any investigation into whether or not the ones other folks have been sporting medicine.

U.S. authorities knowledge undercuts the declare that other folks in search of asylum and different border crossers are liable for drug trafficking. About 90% of fentanyl seizures have been made at legitimate land crossings, now not between crossings the place other folks entered illegally. At a listening to in July, James Mandryck, a CBP deputy assistant commissioner, mentioned 73% of fentanyl seizures on the border because the earlier October have been smuggling makes an attempt performed through U.S. voters, with the remainder being executed through Mexican voters.

A find out about revealed ultimate yr from U.S. legislation enforcement and intelligence companies known as Mexico the “principal source” of fentanyl, with cartels production the drug the usage of precursor chemical substances in large part smuggled from China. But it famous that the disaster may just now not be resolved with out curtailing dependancy within the U.S. that creates overwhelming call for for unlawful opioids.

“The supply of illicit fentanyl cannot be permanently stopped through enforcement alone — only temporarily disrupted before another cartel, trafficking method, or analogue steps in to fill the market that addiction creates,” mentioned the report from the U.S. Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking.

Lopez Obrador took workplace in December 2018 campaigning with a motto of “hugs, not bullets,” and for 4 years has shredded his predecessors’ prosecution of the drug war. Experts agree that extensive swaths of Mexico are below the de facto keep watch over of drug cartels. Lopez Obrador is already delicate to what he considers U.S. “interference” in Mexico, suggesting that overseas brokers have been “spying” as they constructed a fentanyl smuggling case against participants of the Sinaloa drug cartel introduced previous this yr.

Lopez Obrador is defensive about U.S. grievance of his authorities’s failure to stop the glide of fentanyl.

“There is a kind of competition to see who is the most ridiculous, who is most brazen to threaten Mexico, to blame Mexico,” he mentioned at a contemporary news convention. “They are nonsense.”

Mexico will elect a brand new president subsequent yr, and the opposition candidate not too long ago advised Univision that she would settle for extra U.S. brokers and lend a hand. But when requested about army operations, Xóchitl Gálvez mentioned, “We have to get serious. We have to be smart with proposals that are clear and strong and not just to get votes.”

Mexico these days may be the highest buying and selling spouse of the U.S. It has agreed to host brokers from the Drug Enforcement Administration and different federal brokers and to stay 1000’s of migrants rejected on the U.S. border below each the Trump and Biden administrations.

But the U.S. has invaded Mexican territory prior to and attempted to overthrow governments via Latin America for its personal coverage targets.

In 1846, in search of to enlarge U.S. borders after supporting the annexation of Texas, President James Okay. Polk known as on Congress to claim war with Mexico. The war ended with Mexico agreeing to cede 55% of its territory, together with present-day states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, maximum of Arizona and Colorado, and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.

In 1914, the U.S. invaded the port of Veracruz after the arrest of U.S. infantrymen. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson deployed tens of 1000’s of troops in reaction to an assault through Mexican modern Pancho Villa in Columbus, New Mexico.

More not too long ago, Trump promised to construct a southern border wall to stop unlawful immigration — and make Mexico pay for it. While he used to be president, the U.S. would construct or refurbish about 500 miles of wall at the greater than 2,000-mile border.

Mexico by no means paid for any sections of wall. And border crossings would many times hit document highs all over Trump’s presidency and all through Biden’s time period.

“We have to take what they say seriously,” Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy said about the Republican candidates. “But they are pretty much going off the rails. They are engaged in political theater, and they find Mexico an easy target.”

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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this record.