Washington - A group of House and Senate Democrats urged Trump administration officials to recently take action on Latin American cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist groups to reduce the flow of U.S.-made guns on the southern border.

The 14 Democratic lawmakers said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi that the designation released other legal tools that would enable the government to undermine the cartel's financial network and impose Harsere punishment on entities that provide material support to it.

Federal law makes it a crime, subject to fines and 20 years in prison, providing material support or resources to foreign terrorist organizations. Entities that provide weapons, money, equipment or other support to these groups may face federal prosecution if found liable.

“If you want to really address the fentanyl trade, you have to address the source of the power of the people involved in the industry without addressing the guns they receive from American manufacturers and dealers,” said Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, who said the letter was a New York Democrat. “I would say that this is an option you can’t actually successfully remove the cartels, and not remove the trafficking of firearms traveling south, which allows them to send fentanyl trafficking to the north. ”

Democrats urged the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State and Justice to take "immediate" steps to promote the flow of U.S.-produced guns into Mexico, to remove smuggling rings that promote gun trafficking by promoting inter-agency cooperation; to expand inspections at border crossings; to increase enforcement efforts of straw purchases and gun dealers to increase guns that provide significant support to smugglers; and to strengthen intelligence sharing between Mexican authorities and other partners to target arms traffickers.

"This stable supply of weapons that emerged from the north allowed these criminal organizations to control fentanyl and cross-border trafficking and undermine Mexican law enforcement," they wrote in the letter. "In short, if we do not stop the movement of American-made guns from the southern border to Mexico, we will not be able to stop fentanyl from flowing into our country on the same border."

Goldman Sachs said the Justice Department should investigate gun manufacturers and dealers to determine whether they distribute and sell guns to drug cartels directly or through straw buyers.

"The fact that there is an intermediary doesn't mean that no criminal conspiracy is part of them, and the Justice Department needs to use this new foreign terrorist organization design to put more pressure on the gun industry to stop U.S. guns from flowing to cartels," he said.

Between 200,000 and 500,000 guns Trafficked to Mexico Every year, one is called "Iron River." Nearly half of all guns recovered in the U.S. at the Mexican crime scene are made in the U.S., according to data from alcohol, tobacco, guns and explosives. Meanwhile, Mexico has only one gun store and strict gun laws in the country.

one Investigation of CBS Reports Exposed how Americans helped Mexican drug cartels smuggle weapons on the U.S.-Mexico border. The guns were purchased by straw buyers in the United States and were then transported online to the border and into Mexico by brokers and couriers. U.S. intelligence documents and interviews with current and former federal officials revealed that the federal government has known about the weapons cartels have trafficked over the years, but has barely blocked networks operating in the United States.

In order to combat violence caused by drug cartels, the Mexican government filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in 2021, which filed a lawsuit against the largest gun manufacturer and a wholesaler in the United States. Mexico is seeking $10 billion in losses from the gun industry and other forms of relief.

But gun manufacturers are trying to stop litigation because federal law protects them from the harmful liability for other people’s criminal abuse of products. The Supreme Court is currently considering No matter what the Mexican suit Decisions can be made before the end of June.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has tried to leverage the lawsuit as a trade talk with President Trump after his administration designated drug cartels as a terrorist group and threatened a 25% tariff on Mexican imports earlier this year.

Mr. Trump Consensus reached in February After talking to Sheinbaum, tariffs on Mexico's imports paused for 30 days. The Mexican president said at the time that the U.S. government was "committed to prevent trafficking of high-power weapons to Mexico."

Goldman, who served as chief lawyer for the first improvisation investigation of Mr. Trump before he was elected to Congress, said dismantling drug cartels to stop trafficking of fentanyl and other drugs into the United States is a common goal with the government and should bring about cooperation.

"One component of doing so must prevent the flow of the Iron River from entering the cartel's hands," he said.

Goldman Sachs Legislation has been introduced In the last Congress, it aimed to strengthen border security by curbing US-made guns and ammunition on the southern border, and said he was working to reintroduce the bill in the current Congress.

The letters to join Goldman Sachs were: Senators Ben Ray Lujan and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Robert Menendez of New Jersey representatives, Hawaii, Nellie Pou of New Jersey, Timothy Kennedy of New York, and Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico.