Morning Wire - Drug Cartel Violence In America | 2.5.23

Episode Date: February 5, 2023

Drug cartel violence has spread from border towns and large metropolitan cities into small rural towns. As more and more young people die from drug overdoses, local sheriffs are making urgent pleas for help and action. We examine the rise of cartel violence and drug use and what local law enforcement, Congress and a coalition of Governors are doing about it. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Masterworks: "Get priority access! Go to masterworks.com and use promo code ‘MORNING WIRE’" Black Rifle Coffee: "Get 10% off your Coffee Club subscription! BlackRifleCoffee.com promo code ‘WIRE’" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From border towns to large metropolitan cities to even rural counties, the influence of Mexican drug cartels here in the United States is inescapable, most glaringly evidenced by the skyrocketing overdose rate of young Americans. And now, a chilling execution-style murder of a family in rural California puts a new focus on the crisis. For this Sunday edition of Morning Wire, we discussed the shocking murders in Goshen, California, cartel operations in Mexico and the U.S.,

and one sheriff's urgent plea for better policy starting in D.C. Thanks for waking up with us. It's February 5th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Last year, the S&P 500 ended its worst year since 2008. In fact, Bank of America expects zero returns in 2023. But Masterworks just handed back a 35% net return to their investors. You see, with Masterworks, you can invest in fine art from legends like Picasso and Banksy. Their last three sales delivered over 10, 13, and 35% in returns. Go to Masterworks.com and use promo code MorningWire for priority access. That's Masterworks.com promo code MorningWire.

See important disclosures at masterworks.com slash CD. Here to discuss the interconnected issues of cartel violence, border security, and the drug crisis is Daily Wire Reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo. So Amanda, can you first tell us about this truly horrifying incident in Goshen? Sure, John. Six family members, including a 16-year-old mother and her 10-month-old child, were shot assassination style in the early morning hours of January 17th. The young mother, Alyssa Perez, was apparently trying to flee the violence and protect her baby,

Nicholas, before there were both shot in the back of the head. Rosa Perez's 72-year-old grandmother was murdered in her sleep. Tulare County Sheriff Mike Rudrow confirmed last month that this was a targeted hit and suspected to be related to drugs with potential affiliation to a cartel. So we don't know if it is a gang-affiliated shooting, a cartel affiliation, or if the two are combined. But what we can say is the manner in which this occurred is definitely one of the two is not from life. One of the victims, Eladio Perez Jr. was a convicted felon with a lengthy rap sheet,

which included possession of illegal firearms and drugs. Earlier in January, Aladio was arrested after police found weapons and methamphetamine inside the home. But he was released on bail four days later. Sheriff Bruchot cited soft-on-crime policies during a press conference about the murder. California has taken a very soft-on-crime approach. We have to begin holding people accountable for violent crimes. People who use guns who are criminals need to be held accountable for using guns and being criminals. He also highlighted policies at the southern border.

I can say cartels are here. They are here for multiple reasons. Selling drugs is lucrative. There's a lot of money to be made. The other is that we have a very unsecured border right now. there's a lot of back and forth when it comes to the cartels of free movement up and down the state and across the border. The public received an update on the case during a press conference on Friday. Sheriff Brudrow announced that two males, 35-year-old Angel Uriotti and 25-year-old Noah Beard,

were both charged with six counts of murder and other crimes in connection to the massacre. Boudreau made a direct plea to Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to lift the death penalty moratorium in California. My message to Governor Newsom. Governor, we've arrested the perpetrators. We've done our part. We're asking that you do your part. We need to look at death-sickland justice for those who kill the innocence of the innocent. Now, this family murder in California was widely covered in the press after the local sheriff said he believed it was, you know, cartel-related.

Has there been an uptick in cartel-linked violence in the U.S., specifically in these rural areas? Well, it sort of depends on how you're defining it, but the short answer is yes. Basically, these cartels have had access points all over the United States and almost every big city for decades. Right now, the two most dominant in the U.S. are the Sinaloa cartel and the far newer Halisco New Generation Cartel. They have ties in cities across the nation. DEA data indicates that some of the top cartel hubs include Denver, Phoenix, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago. What's happening is this organized drug trafficking is growing and expanding. to every inch of America, including these more rural areas.

Some analysts have suggested this move toward rural America is due to cartels looking to evade more sophisticated law enforcement that's found along the border in larger cities. Dr. Pablo Caldron Martinez, author and assistant professor of politics and international relations at Northeastern University London, he told me that might be a contributing factor, but generally it's because drug cartels are just expanding to new markets like any other big business with enormous resources would do. It's like any other business, right? They see where the demand do.

They have better information than any of us because, you know, criminal organizations, an organization that sell drugs is going to know what people buying drugs want and where they want them because that's their job to understand this drug use patterns. And they will get it long before we do. So, yeah, they will go where the demand takes them. And they will try to push their products as any other business in the world. does, right? As, you know, the same way Coca-Cola reach every tiny little corner in the world, I don't think you can ever go to a town small enough, pretty much anywhere in the world,

that doesn't sell Coca-Cola. You know, criminal organization in the same way, right? They're going to be wherever there might be people that want their products. They're going to try to drive demands up. They operate like any other business, and they have huge amounts of resources to fulfill that demands. So with the expanding illicit drug market comes more addiction, overdose deaths, destroyed families, and sometimes this direct violence. I'll stress that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA, and a report released in 2020, said there was, quote, minimal spillover of cartel violence here in the States. They're talking about direct violence like murder and shootouts with police that we really see in Mexico all the time. So in other words, we're not seeing the kinds of open violence on this side of the border like we see in Mexico.

Mexico from the cartels. Yeah, exactly. Cartels know this would be bad for business. They don't want to be detected or scrutinized by our law enforcement, which is far more powerful than anything they're going to face in Mexico. They want to continue to profit off illegal drugs under the radar. Mexican drug cartels, just the value of cocaine, and I'm not talking about any other drug, just cocaine that moves through Mexico, that is controlled by Mexican drug cartels in some way.

It's in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It's massive, right? they control huge amount of resources. And it's impossible for anyone government, particularly for local sort of police forces. They simply cannot compete with the resources available to these criminal organizations. In the United States, we know for a fact that, you know, police forces are much better equipped and they have much better resources than any Mexican, probably any other police force in the world. So, yeah, it would definitely be bad for business.

because, you know, whilst you can challenge the local police or the state police in Sinaloa, to some extent, you simply cannot do the same with, you know, the California state police or even worse, you know, the DEA or any other federal law enforcement agency, it's just not going to happen. So there is a complete mismatch there. Drug conflicts and criminal conflicts, there's only one way of solving them. And if there is a conflict big enough, then it's to be solved by violence. It's going to be solved by violence. I also spoke to Sheriff Samuel Page of Rockingham County in North Carolina, specifically about cartel violence and drug trafficking.

Now, North Carolina in particular, is notable since the DEA in 2021 identified the state as housing one of the top hubs for cartel activity in the nation. In Rockingham County alone, Sheriff Page told me 17 people died of overdose deaths just last year. Sheriff Page said when he first visited the southern border to check out some of these issues about a decade ago, he made a prediction that unfortunately has come to fruition. I've been quoted making a comment, and I truly believe this today. As we've discussed here before, overdose deaths of young people have just exploded in the U.S. As noted by Sheriff Page last year alone,

it's estimated that around 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, and this was largely affecting people from 18 to 45 years old. Here's Ohio Governor Mike DeWine while visiting the border with nine other governors about a year ago. In Ohio, at least 80% of our overdose deaths every week are caused by fentanyl. It is being mixed into everything. This crisis at the southern border is a humanitarian crisis. It's also a drug crisis.

It's a fentanyl crisis. And while we're discussing this within the context of Mexico and the United States, we have to keep in mind that this issue is even far more global than that. A lot of the supplies and chemical supplies and sort of the raw materials that you need to create a fentanyl A lot of them come from China, and they enter from China to Mexico, and then fentanyl is prepared in Mexico, in clandestine labs, and then is moved from Mexico and from other parts in Latin America to the United States. And that's more or less the supply chain. So the question then becomes, how do we stem the tide? What measures can be taken to effectively slow cartel activity and the fatal havoc they wreak?

Sheriff Page told me we need to start from the top deck. We've got to reduce demand. What is Mexico doing? Dr. Caldron-Martinez emphasized that work must be done on both sides of the border. There is no easy answer. This is really a shared problem

from Mexico and the United States, right? And there cannot be a solution that is taken just at one side because we have to tackle both sides of the problem, right? And the both sides of the problem is drug consumption and the changing patterns in drug consumption. and, of course, the supply of these drugs, right?

But you have to tackle them both at the same time. Now, what are we seeing in terms of action on the federal level about this problem? Well, one of the latest congressional efforts to address the fentanyl crisis is the introduction of the Republican-sponsored Halt Act. The legislation seeks to permanently keep fentanyl and fentanyl analogs under the Schedule 1 category of the Controlled Substances Act, in addition to granting researchers the ability to conduct studies on these substances. Regarding the physical border, Republican Governor Greg Abbott announced Monday that he's created

and filled the new position of Texas Borders Tsar to oversee border security in quote, President Joe Biden's absence. In last year, 26 governors teamed up to create the American governor's border strike force. This is a multi-state partnership designed to disrupt and dismantle the transnational criminal organizations taking advantage of the open border with Mexico. Well, the increasingly aggressive action being taken by the states definitely highlights just how dire the situation has become. Yeah, it really has. Amanda, thanks for reporting.

That was Daily Wire reporter, Amanda Press-A-Jacquimo, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know. Hey, guys, producer Brandon here. Black Rifle Coffee has expanded their team of active duty service members,

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