DANGEROUS GUNBOAT LUNACY

Pete Hegseth Won’t Rule Out Invading Mexico to Stop Drug Cartels

Will Neal
Sat, February 1, 2025 

Fox News


U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth won’t rule out military action in Mexico to prevent drugs from crossing America’s southern border amid the Trump administration’s renewed effort to crack down on transnational crime.

Speaking with Fox News on Friday night, the former network host said “all options will be on the table” after President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating “certain international cartels (the Cartels) and other organizations” as foreign terrorist organizations.

As Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade put it to Hegseth, “If they continue to fire at our border patrol, and if they continue to pour fentanyl into our country, as secretary of defense, are you permitted now to go after them in Mexico or wherever they are?”

Hegseth responded, “I don’t want to get ahead of the president, and I won’t. That’s ultimately going to be his decision, but let me be clear: all options will be on the table if we’re dealing with what are designated to be foreign terrorist organizations who are specifically targeting Americans on the border.”
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He added, “We’re finally securing our border. We’ve been securing other people’s borders for a very long time. The military is orienting, shifting toward an understanding of homeland defense on our sovereign territorial border.”

Hegseth said that the U.S. military intends to pursue these goals “robustly,” and “should the cartels continue to pour people, gangs and drugs and violence into our country, we will take that on.”

He added, “Ultimately, we will hold nothing back to secure the American people.”

Trump’s “day one” executive order has called for the Pentagon to mobilize roughly 1,500 active-duty soldiers to further bolster Defense Department and border patrol officials already at the U.S.-Mexico border.

It is, however, unclear at this stage whether the Trump administration has any designs for an actual incursion into the nation’s southern neighbor, given the likely severe international blowback and extreme danger posed to U.S. civilians by any prospect of all-out violence in America’s borderlands.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the White House also pushed on with imposing tariffs of 25 percent on the flow of goods into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada—a move designed to further curtail cartel activity, but which economists have said threaten to seriously drive up the price of products coming in from abroad.


US Defense Secretary Hegseth to visit border on first trip

Sun, February 2, 2025 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Washington

By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's first trip since taking office will be to the United States' border with Mexico on Monday, in the latest sign that fortifying the border will be a priority for the Pentagon under President Donald Trump.

Trump has increasingly turned to the military to help carry out his immigration agenda, including sending additional troops to the border, using military aircraft to fly migrants out of the United States, and opening up military bases to help house them.

"POTUS wants 100% operational control of the border—and we will deliver," Hegseth said on Sunday on X, referring to Trump, as he announced the trip to visit troops on the border.

Trump declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act on Saturday, citing the "extraordinary threat" from fentanyl and illegal immigration, and imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and an extra duty on Chinese goods.

Republican Trump last week said he was expanding a detention facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold 30,000 people. His White House border czar, Tom Homan, has said he hopes to start moving migrants there within 30 days.

Additional U.S. Marines arrived at Guantanamo Bay in recent days to prepare to expand a facility that holds migrants.

The Pentagon has also started providing flights for the deportations of more than 5,000 immigrants held by U.S. authorities in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that U.S. military aircraft flew detained migrants to Honduras and Peru over the weekend.

The military flights are a costly way to fly migrants. Reuters reported that a military deportation flight to Guatemala last week likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant.

That is more than five times the $853 cost of a one-way first-class ticket on American Airlines from El Paso, Texas, the departure point for the flight.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Saad Sayeed)