The Gulf Cartel just threatened to wipe out a town in southern Mexico. Why should Americans care? That same cartel also controls Mexico’s northeast border with the U.S. and controls the busiest illegal alien smuggling routes into our country. They tie down Border Patrol and bring their assassins, financiers, drug runners, and general criminals over our border. They are every bit as terroristic as Islamic terrorist groups in the Middle East, and they’re in our own yard. Why won’t the State Department designate them as terrorists?

According to Borderland Beat, which monitors daily cartel activities, Gulf Cartel assassins entered the town of Asuncion Ixtaltepec in broad daylight with long guns to murder a resident on Wednesday. These types of assassinations happen every day. But lest people think this is limited to targeted cartel-on-cartel violence, the Gulf assassins left a “narco message” at the site of the assassination that read: “This is for El Burro, Pollito, and his people. And for all the town who covers for them. You will all die. Sincerely, Comandante Jaguar. CDG.”

This is the dictionary and statutory definition of terrorism that continues to be ignored by the State Department, which refuses to designate these cartels as such. These cartels seek to control territory through the use of terror! They are not simply crime syndicates that just want to earn money quietly.

The Mexican cartel culture is similar to the ideology of ISIS and al Qaeda in the sense that they seek “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) or to effect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping,” which is the definition of international terrorism under 18 U.S.C. § 2331.

If anything, they now have more impact on our country than Islamic terrorists and certainly more than FARC, the Colombian drug cartel that is already designated by the State Department. Why is this administration not unleashing the Defense Department and the intelligence assets to be used against the cartels on both sides of our border?

Rather than lambast our government agencies for committing human rights violations against illegal aliens, Jaeson Jones, former captain in the Texas Department of Public Safety’s intel and counterterrorism division, believes we should be criticizing them for ignoring the human rights violations of the cartels, which affect both our security and the survival of the migrants.

“The weaponization of migration has masked a dark truth,” said the retired counter-cartel operative. “Massive human rights violations have been and are being committed in Mexico. All of the three-letter agencies of the United States government have become complicit for failing to do everything in their power to protect the American people and to secure our border. The State Department refuses to designate the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), and the FBI, DEA, and Department of Defense (DOD) refuse to support CBP and finally secure our border.”

Jones believes that these agencies are stuck in the past and just don’t have the stomach to reorient our threat assessments to focus on the border and the cartels as a national security issue. “I get it, it sucks that these agencies will have to change their current priorities, but good intel analysts don’t look at the evolving threat landscape the way they wish it was, they look at it for what it is and what most reasonable Americans believe. The threat to our southern border is substantial, and we must protect our country from the out-of-control violence plaguing Mexico and our nation.”

Jones noted how high-ranking Gulf leaders are living in the Rio Grande Valley – on our side of the border. “They often live lives of wealth and comfort and might pick their kids up from school on our side of the border before they travel back over to Tamaulipas and torture some people, then come right back over.”

Indeed, just last week, a Gulf Cartel leader was caught crossing over our border by Border Patrol in La Paloma, Texas, according to Breitbart Texas. How many more does Border Patrol miss because our political leaders prioritize care for illegals over national security, especially in these parts of the Rio Grande Valley where there is no border wall? Without a wall, the cartels use the bends in the river to easily cross undetected and disappear into the population because the populated towns are right on the border without any buffer of wall or desert.

Jones believes that designating the cartels as terrorists will open up many more investigative tools against those operators inside our country in addition to using DOD assets to combat them at the border itself.

This is happening all across our border, not just with the Gulf Cartel. Sinaloa, which is still the largest cartel, controls most of the territory on both sides of the Mexican border with California and Arizona. Last month, there was a Sinaloa shootout a half a block away from Arizona’s Cochise County. But that narco culture and all the violence that comes along with it is creeping into Arizona itself.

“Most Americans would be shocked to know how deeply entrenched the cartels are throughout this country,” warned Mark Lamb, sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona. “We fight against the cartels every day to uproot their scouts living in the mountains and to disrupt and dismantle their drug and human trafficking operations. Though we are 70 miles off the border, we are one of the last lines of defense, fighting to protect communities and families across this great country that will be negatively impacted, including the lives of those being exploited by the cartels.”

Even though Pinal County is not even on the border itself, Sheriff Lamb told me Sinaloa knows his county through and through and has a lot of operational control of the smuggling routes deep into U.S. territory.

Clearly, the root of the problem at the border is the national security problem of the actual people engaging in the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Were the State Department to finally designate the cartels and treat them the same way we would treat al Qaeda at our border, it would not only solve the security problem but would pre-empt the humanitarian problem.

This is exactly why Sergio Tinoco, a supervisor border agent in the Rio Grande Valley, believes that Border Patrol must be unshackled to actually deal with the mission at hand instead of serving as babysitters. “So long as we continue focusing solely on the needs of illegal immigrants and the humanitarian issue without dealing with the cartels and the security problem, we will continue playing into the hands of the cartels,” warned the exasperated agent on my podcast.

After holding numerous hearings about the needs and wants of illegal immigrants, Congress is on vacation until September. Meanwhile, agents like Tinoco are forced to deal with these brutal cartels alone, without backup, and with two hands tied behind their backs in 105-degree heat in dangerous territory. Decisions made in the air-conditioned halls of Congress and the State Department could change all of that. (For more from the author of “Not Terrorists? Gulf Cartel Threatens to Wipe out Mexican Town” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

Over 10,000 Americans die every year in drunk driving accidents. Many of them are caused by foreign nationals who either should never have been in the country or who could have been previously deported for prior arrests. Now it appears that the position of anti-ICE activists and sanctuary city politicians is that they will work to thwart the deportation even of serial illegal alien drunk drivers who have been ordered deported by a judge.

On Tuesday, a group of anti-ICE protesters helped a criminal alien lock himself in a car with a 12-year-old boy being used as a human shield after they saw a group of ICE agents coming to apprehend him. The protesters enabled him to remain in the car for four hours in the Hermitage area of metro Nashville and then, after ICE agents had already decided to come back another day, engaged in a political stunt and surrounded the car with a human chain.

One protester who helped form the human chain around the car told the local ABC affiliate, “I could see if these people were bad criminals, but they’re not. They’re just trying to provide for their kids.”

There’s just one problem. The individual was indeed a criminal alien with a final deportation order who has remained an ICE fugitive for nearly a decade. An ICE official confirmed the man’s identity to CR so that CR could locate his criminal history.

The man who locked himself in the car is a 29-year-old Mexican national who has been arrested at least three times in Tennessee. According to Davidson County court records, he was arrested on March 22, 2010, for drunk driving and for driving without a license. He was sentenced to time served and a year of probation.

According to ICE, he was ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2010 but was offered voluntary departure on July 28 (which comes with less criminal offense if he were to re-enter illegally). He was given until November 26 to depart. Instead of taking the offer, he absconded and then was given a final order of deportation in absentia, making him a criminal fugitive.

Astoundingly, he was arrested again on August 31 of that year and was found guilty of misdemeanor identity fraud and driving without a license. Again, he was cycled in and out of the criminal justice system with a final order to leave the country, and yet local officials treated him as if he were an American.

The Mexican fugitive was once again arrested in Davidson County on May 1 of this year for driving on a revoked license with an open container of alcohol, which was also a violation of his probation. Then he was in court on July 2 for a hearing over his probation violation.

How was this man able to cycle in and out of jail and court and interact with state government without ever being turned over to ICE? This was all after a final order of deportation.

Yet local officials who were at the protest treat ICE agents as if they, not the illegal aliens, are the criminals. Nashville Metro Councilman Bob Mendes, who claimed to be on scene at the attempted apprehension, said in a statement, “There are reports I have heard that the ICE agents may have been telling the gentleman in the van that he had to give himself up or else MNPD would arrest him. If that’s what they said, that’s not true.”

Mendes went on to extol the policy of Nashville not to cooperate with ICE.

Mayor David Briley said ICE “stokes fear and distrust in our most vulnerable communities, which is why we do not use our local resources to enforce ICE orders.” He promised to work with local open-borders groups “to make sure residents know their rights and that support and resources are available for undocumented immigrants should the need arise.”

We have now reached the point where these sanctuaries are harboring, aiding, abetting, and shielding from detection those who violate our driving laws, drive drunk, and violate a deportation order for nine years. Those are all violations of 8 U.S. Code §1324. DHS and DOJ have been lax about prosecuting sanctuary officials for harboring illegal aliens.

What these local officials are essentially saying is that anyone is allowed to break into the country and nobody is allowed to be deported, even after they are arrested for subsequent crimes. For activists and local politicians to interfere with enforcement of sovereignty is the ultimate form of anarchy against American citizens.

Moreover, for illegal aliens to refuse to depart and then lock themselves in a car is itself a criminal offense on top of the baseline civil immigration violation. 8 U.S. Code §1253 states as follows:

“Any alien against whom a final order of removal is outstanding…who willfully fails or refuses to depart from the United States within a period of 90 days from the date of the final order of removal under administrative processes” or who “willfully fails or refuses to make timely application in good faith for travel or other documents necessary to the alien’s departure” or who “connives or conspires, or takes any other action, designed to prevent or hamper or with the purpose of preventing or hampering the alien’s departure pursuant to such” or who “willfully fails or refuses to present himself or herself for removal at the time and place required by the Attorney General pursuant to such order” is subject to up to four years of imprisonment.

ICE could go back and obtain a criminal warrant from a U.S. attorney in this case for violation of §1253, but the agency has never had to do this since the implementation of federal immigration laws in the late 1800s. The Ninth Circuit issued a lawless ruling requiring it to obtain a criminal warrant to break into a house or car to get an illegal alien. But that opinion is not valid outside the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, especially as it violates Supreme Court precedent. In Turner v. Williams (1904), the court made it very clear that as long as immigration officers are not trying to criminally convict the alien but rather deport him, “Detention or temporary confinement as part of the means necessary to give effect to the exclusion or expulsion was held valid.” The fact that an alien commits another crime to hamper that apprehension doesn’t make him better off and give him the right to thwart the basic actions necessary to affect the removal.

This principle was clearly established by James Iredell, one of the authors of Article III of the Constitution and a founding member of the Supreme Court. In 1799, he said the following, applying even of people who were lawfully admitted into the country, much more to those who violate today’s immigration laws and are ordered to be deported:

“Any alien coming to this country must or ought to know, that this being an independent nation, it has all the rights concerning the removal of aliens which belong by the law of nations to any other; that while he remains in the country in the character of an alien, he can claim no other privilege than such as an alien is entitled to, and consequently, whatever [risk] he may incur in that capacity is incurred voluntarily, with the hope that in due time by his unexceptionable conduct, he may become a citizen of the United States.”

For now, there is civil disobedience against the immigration laws, even when the subjects are drunk drivers and even accused child molesters. The only question is whether the administration will begin enforcing current law. (For more from the author of “Anarchy: Protesters Help Stop ICE From Apprehending Criminal Alien” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE