The Trump administration is targeting two high-level Mexican cartel members with sanctions, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday, in a move angel mom Anne Fundner calls a “very strong message.”
“These criminal organizations are, let’s make no mistake about it, they are foreign terrorist organizations,” Fundner says of the criminal drug cartels. “They’re involved in human trafficking, arms trafficking, [and] drug trafficking.”
“I don’t think that there’s anything tough enough that we can do to get [the cartels] under control,” she told The Daily Signal in response to the announcement of the new sanctions. “The Trump administration and the Department of Treasury are sending a very strong message that this needs to stop, and by any means possible.”
Fundner lost her 15-year-old son, Weston, when a peer gave him a substance that contained a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022.
“I truly believe that if President [Donald] Trump were president during the last administration from 2020 to 2024, that we would have seen a dramatic reduction in any of this activity, and my son might still be here today,” Fundner said.
Mexico-based Cartel del Noreste members Miguel Angel de Anda Ledezma and Ricardo Gonzalez Sauceda have engaged in drug and arms trafficking and violence against U.S. and Mexican authorities, according to the Treasury Department.
Cartel del Noreste is “one of the most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico and a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the department said.
Mexican authorities arrested Gonzalez, who led the armed enforcement wing of Cartel del Noreste, in February. At the time of his arrest, Gonzalez was found in possession of 1,500 fentanyl pills, methamphetamine, and guns, according to the Treasury Department.
Now, all property and interests belonging to Gonzalez and De Anda that is in the U.S., or in U.S. possession, is “blocked.”
“President Trump’s actions against the cartels fulfill the promise that he made when he stated time and time again that he would not allow the cartels to operate with impunity on our borders or within the interior of the United States,” Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said in a statement Wednesday.
The new sanctions “deal a significant blow and serve to send the message to all cartels, as well as to those who wish to do harm to Americans, that President Trump will not just talk about it, he will follow through,” Perez said.
While the “drugs, weapons and other contraband, to include the smuggling and trafficking of persons into and throughout the United States, created chaos and terror,” the actions of the Trump administration are working to bring the chaos “to an end,” he said.
Drug trafficking, particularly of fentanyl, increased under the Biden administration, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The CBP said it seized more than 68,000 pounds of fentanyl at U.S. borders or ports of entry under the Biden administration, compared with about 20,000 pounds during the first Trump administration.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
