Mexican Drug Cartel Essay

Threat Assessment

BLUF:

The Mexican drug cartels pose one of the biggest threats to the United States of America. This paper will discuss why and how they pose a threat to national security.

Overall Threat assessment:

The overall threat rating for the Mexican drug cartels is very high. They threaten not only our national security but also our way of life. For multiple reasons such s bringing drugs into the country and also by smuggling illegal aliens into the country along with terrorist.

History:

In the 1980’s the first Mexican drug cartel first made its appearance with drug kingpin Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo who created the Guadalajara cartel. In 1986 he had ties with Pablo Escobar to transport his Columbian cocaine into the United

States. The main purpose of forming the cartel is to gain power and make a lot of money. Most of the people in the cartel are there because they did not have a lot of money so they saw it as the opportunity to make fast money.

Membership/ Leadership:
There are multiply drug cartels and each is made up of soldiers that do all the footwork and a cartel leader. The leader of the cartels rises to power by being one of the higher people in the cartel and takes out the cartel leader.

Structure/ Organization:
The Mexican cartels are very similar to a large corporation.

They have a CEO, site managers, employees, and finally the customers. It is very organized and sell multiply items things like weapons, drugs, and even people. This makes it easier for people to shutdown the cartels if they have enough man power to do so.

Current Goal/ Motivation:

The current goal of the cartel is to make money and maintain its power. They also want to take out the competing cartels to take control of their territory and get their buyers. The cartels have people all over the country and that includes the prison system where they also take out competitors for business.

Tactics/ Capabilities:

The Mexican Cartels use a few different tactics; which include fear, force, and guerrilla tactics. They are highly capable with these tactics and are only becoming stronger. The cartels use a variety of weapons from knives up to bombs and everything in the middle. An example of the tactics use fear to gain political protection in both Mexico and the United States. They use force to take out competition and gain more power. The use of guerrilla tactics is to smuggle people in and out of the country and to take out political figures trying to minimize their

operations.

Funding / Connections:
The cartels are funding through the things they sell and by getting money for smuggling people into America. They grow many of the drugs they sell and also move drugs for some South American countries such as Columbia. Columbia uses the Mexican drug cartels to move their drugs because they already have a network set up to get them into the country. The cartels pay political and law enforcements figures for protection in their home countries so they can continue business. Our own Central Intelligence Agency once protected the cartels because the CIA saw them as an asset to them.

Location/ Scope/ Magnitude:
The drug cartels are mainly located out of Mexico but have safe houses and drug locations in the United States. They reach down into the South American countries for certain drugs to make a little more money. I feel they are a global threat to the United States because it is known that they have helped terrorist organizations to get into the country using their smuggling routes.

Countering the Threat:
To counter this threat the United States needs to shut down the border crossings they are using to get into the country. That would be step one, step two would be to infiltrate the cartels like we did in the 80’s. Doing that would give inside information on where their stash houses are and who the power players are that need to be taken out.