Americans are showing a surprising appetite for direct military intervention in Mexico to wage war against smuggling cartels that are pumping drugs and illegal immigrants into the U.S.
A poll this month found that 61% of Americans back the idea of deploying the military to “fight the Mexican cartels.” A poll released in May found that 53% of Americans support “deployment of U.S. military personnel and assets inside Mexico.”
The idea has gained strength amid the chaos of the southern border and calls from high-profile Republican presidential hopefuls, including former President Donald Trump and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Mr. Trump has said he would use U.S. Special Forces against the cartels. Mr. Scott said he would “allow the world’s greatest military” to attack.
The TIPP/Daily Mail survey this month found support for intervention across party lines, with majorities of independents, Democrats and Republicans. Republicans were the most enthusiastic, with 70% backing the idea, compared with 58% of Democrats.
Another survey conducted by TIPP for the National Sheriffs Association last month specifically asked about sending the American military into Mexico. That also drew majority support.
Mr. Trump’s plans include a naval blockade.
Experts generally pan the idea.
“Not a fan,” said Todd Bensman, author of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.”
“The whole thing just seems like a pretty questionable endeavor. I don’t know how we would win that or what we would call a win,” Mr. Bensman said.
He said the cartels would defend their ground and wiping them out would probably require U.S. troops to occupy territory.
Mexico’s government tried something similar under President Felipe Calderon in a war that cost tens of thousands of lives but didn’t solve the problem. Mr. Bensman said the Mexican government gave up too early and should be pushed to try again, but he said the best the U.S. could do is support those efforts.
Moving in without Mexican support is also a bad idea, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland and hemispheric affairs, told Congress earlier this year.
“I do worry, based on very strong signals we’ve gotten from the Mexicans in the past, concerns about their sovereignty, concerns about potential reciprocal steps that they might take to cut off our access if we were to take some of the steps that are in consideration,” she said.
Indeed, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has fumed at the idea.
“We are not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory,” he said in March.
He was responding to talk of U.S. intervention after cartel operatives attacked and kidnapped four Americans in Matamoros. Two of the Americans died of gunshot wounds. The other two survived and were released, one with gunshot wounds in the leg. A stray bullet killed a Mexican woman.
The attack has been labeled a case of mistaken identity.
The Gulf Cartel released an apology letter accepting responsibility and saying it was turning over some of its people to authorities.
In the wake of the kidnapping, Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said he would craft legislation to pave the way for American troops to be committed to battling the cartels. In late March, he introduced a bill to create a task force to develop a strategy.
The bill has not seen any action.
A lesser option of formally designating cartels as terrorist organizations has more widespread support.
The idea that military options would be attractive to Republicans is surprising, given the party’s general antipathy toward military adventures.
The Biden administration last month ordered 1,500 troops to the border, though they were assigned tasks in the U.S. and were instructed not to engage in law enforcement. They are generally prohibited from being used to enforce laws in the U.S. under the Posse Comitatus Act.
Texas has deployed the National Guard, assisted by other conservative state governors who have sent troops.
The plans from Republican presidential hopefuls go further.
Rolling Stone reported that Mr. Trump has asked for a “battle plan” to enter Mexico. He was following up on ideas he had while in office, detailed by his former Pentagon chief, to shoot missiles into Mexico to take out drug laboratories.
Mr. Scott said he would pursue the cartels until they “cease to exist.”
“I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall, and I will allow the world’s greatest military to fight these terrorists — because that’s exactly what they are,” he said in announcing his presidential run.
The cartels make money off everything that moves north across the border. Drugs traditionally have been the big source of money, but the size of the migrant smuggling economy in recent years has grown to rival drugs.
Illegal immigrants caught by border agents pay anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars to $35,000 to be smuggled into the U.S., according to The Washington Times’ database of smuggling cases.
A standard smuggling fee for a single adult Mexican migrant is $9,000 to $10,000, and $15,000 is a typical payment for a Central American.
Everyone involved in the smuggling gets a cut, including guides who shepherd migrants through Mexico and across the border, stash house operators who hold the migrants, and drivers who ferry the migrants to their destinations. The cartels usually take a flat “mafia fee” of about $1,000 for allowing the use of their smuggling routes.
Given the numbers at the border over the past year, the smuggling economy totaled more than $20 billion.
It’s the flow of fentanyl that has particularly concerned Republican policymakers.
They blame Chinese outfits for crafting the “precursor” drugs that Mexican cartels cook into the deadly opiate and smuggle into the U.S. Fentanyl accounted for the vast majority of the nearly 110,000 drug overdose deaths recorded in 2022.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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