Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth has refused to rule out the potential for navy motion towards Mexican drug cartels.
In an interview with Fox Information Channel’s Fox & Associates on Friday morning, Hegseth stated that “all choices are on the desk” when it got here to coping with overseas terrorist organizations.
Here’s a transcript of the change:
KILMEADE: “If we discover that they proceed to fireplace at Border Management they usually proceed to place fentanyl into our nation, as a secretary of protection, are you permitted now to go after them in Mexico or the place they’re?”
HEGSETH: Brian, I don’t wish to get forward of the president and I gained’t. That’s finally going to be his determination.
However let me be clear. All choices can be on the desk if we’re coping with what are designated to be overseas terrorist organizations who’re particularly concentrating on Individuals on our border.
We’re lastly securing our border. We’ve been securing different folks’s border for a really very long time. The navy is orienting, shifting towards an understanding of homeland protection on our sovereign territorial border.
That’s one thing we are going to do and do robustly. So we’re already doing it. Ought to there be different choices needed to stop the cartels from persevering with to pour folks gangs and medicines and violence into our nation — we are going to take that on.
So the president will make that decision. I’ll work with him in that call making course of. Finally, we are going to maintain nothing again to safe the American folks.
Pete Hegseth opens the door to U.S. navy strikes towards Mexican drug cartels.
“All choices are on the desk if we’re coping with what are designated to be overseas terrorist organizations who’re particularly concentrating on Individuals on our border.”
— Ben Kew (@ben_kew) January 31, 2025
On his first day in workplace, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order designating cartels and different organizations as “Overseas Terrorist Organizations and specifically designated international terrorists.”
This order has led to elementary adjustments in how regulation enforcement is allowed to deal with counter-narcotics investigations as a result of authorities are granted further powers when coping with terrorists or these deemed a menace to nationwide safety.
The order acknowledged:
The Cartels have engaged in a marketing campaign of violence and terror all through the Western Hemisphere that has not solely destabilized nations with important significance for our nationwide pursuits but additionally flooded america with lethal medicine, violent criminals, and harsh gangs.
The Cartels functionally management, by a marketing campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute drive almost all unlawful visitors throughout the southern border of america. In sure parts of Mexico, they operate as quasi-governmental entities, controlling almost all points of society.
The Cartels’ actions threaten the security of the American folks, the safety of america, and the steadiness of the worldwide order within the Western Hemisphere.
Their actions, proximity to, and incursions into the bodily territory of america pose an unacceptable nationwide safety threat to america.
Hegseth, in the meantime, continues to be adjusting to being answerable for the Pentagon after he was confirmed to the position by a 51-50 vote within the Senate through which Vice President J.D. Vance acted as a tiebreaker.
All Democrats voted towards Hegseth’s nomination, whereas RINOs Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski additionally refused to help him.
