Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, in Room 517, Hart Senate Office Building, in Washington, D.C.
Transcript
[John] The Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control will come to order. Good afternoon, everyone. I wanna thank Secretary Pompeo for being here today, as well as members of the caucus. To my knowledge, Mr. Secretary, this is the first time we’ve had a cabinet member address the drug caucus, and I think given the circumstances we find ourselves in, and the events of even the last few days, make this especially appropriate that we hear from the nation’s top diplomat on this important topic. Obviously, the rising global narcotics epidemic is inflicting the highest rate of casualties in our nation’s history. In America alone in 2017, more than 70,000 people died of drug overdoses. I’m advised that just since 2006, Mexico has seen 150,000 people murdered in the course of the cartel violence, of course, associated with market share and real estate when it comes to the international drug trade. Reflecting on those numbers, it made me think about other national efforts that we’ve undertaken, international efforts, dealing with not only the threat of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, obviously, the war in Iraq, and the idea that we would somehow lose 70,000 Americans in one year alone to drug overdoses and not consider this a matter of national urgency is really staggering, so we hope to turn that around. In order to break this devastating cycle, we need to take a holistic, whole of government approach to address supply and demand, as well as expand treatment for those suffering from substance abuse. Today we’ll focus on supply, and in particular, the international sources of narcotics, and our nation’s strategy to prevent them from reaching our borders and infiltrating our communities. The current effects of the narcotics epidemic cannot be overstated. It is not hyperbole to say we’ve reached a crisis point. The 2018 National Drug Assessment reports that drug poisoning deaths remain a leading cause of injury and death in the United States. They’re currently, as I said earlier, at the highest level ever recorded, the 2017 numbers, and have outnumbered deaths from firearms, motor vehicles, suicide, and homicide. In 2016, 174 Americans died every day from drug overdoses. In my home state of Texas, we remain severely impacted in terms of the volume of trafficking and all related mayhem that accompanies that illicit activity. In 2017, nearly 3,000 Texans died of drug overdoses. Approximately half of those were related to opioids, with a dramatic increase in synthetic opioid-related deaths. Of course, the emergence of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, as a significant contributor has skyrocketed in prominence over the last few years and has been the subject of previous hearings of this caucus, and I know of efforts, international and diplomatic efforts, with China by the Trump administration and by you, Mr. Secretary. As these numbers indicate, illicit drugs, as well as the transnational and domestic criminal organizations that traffic them, continue to represent significant threats to public health, law enforcement, and to our national security. While the most evident focus of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control is to expand cooperation against drug abuse and narcotics trafficking, those efforts do not occur in a vacuum. I believe we need a comprehensive national strategy that will focus both on supply, which we are examining here today, and demand. That strategy must also take actions against transnational criminal organizations that are running rampant and engaging in a broad range of criminal activities. The Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, and many others, maintain a presence, not only in Central America and in Mexico, but also in my state of Texas. They specialize in moving vast amounts of cocaine and heroin, fentanyl, and other illegal drugs throughout the region. But as we know, it’s not just drugs they’re carrying. As one wit phrased it recently, he said, they’re commodity agnostic. In other words, they’ll traffic in drugs, in migrants, in human beings for sex slavery, money laundering, counterfeit goods, you name it, whatever will make them a buck. In the face of all of this violence and trauma, the groups fueling the cycle are becoming richer and are growing their influence in the United States. And without intervention, their power will only grow. Because we cannot win this fight alone, our strategy needs to improve our security cooperation with our international partners, particularly, Mexico. Finally, it must invest in economic security and promote a stronger and more stable Central America. Secretary Pompeo and the experts on our second panel will shed light on the growing narcotics epidemic in our hemisphere and across the globe, so I look forward to hearing their testimony and learning how we can work together to form a comprehensive, whole of government strategy that reduces the flow of illicit drugs into the United States and helps keep our citizens safe. With that, let me turn the microphone over to my co-chairman, Senator Feinstein, for her opening comments.
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. And welcome, Mr. Secretary. This is the first hearing of our caucus in this congress. I think it’s good news that you’re here, and I look forward to working with you as chairman, senator, and I also want to thank Senator Grassley for his tenure as chairman, and welcome Senator Rosen and Senator Perdue. I think we all know that the illicit drug trade in this country is really big business. It’s valued at anywhere from 426 to 652 billion dollars. Its reach is global, its distribution is growing, its leadership is criminal. Like any business, it adapts to market changes. In this case, US demand and international enforcement are the two things, and its motivation is power and profit at any cost. In my state, California, our largest state, the cost was nearly 5,000 lives in 2017. In the United States, our states, it was more than 70,000 lives. Globally, the cost only increases. In 2015, the latest year for which data is available, excuse me, I can’t get rid of this. It was 450,000 lives. These estimates don’t consider the lives lost due to the violence associated with this illicit trade, both in the United States and in the source and transit countries. In FY 2019, this year, 22 countries have been identified as major transit or source countries for illicit drugs. Profits obtained from narcotic production fund dangerous cartels, transnational criminal organizations in Mexico, China, and countries in Central and South America. And their profit margin is only increasing. Last year, more than 133,000 pounds of heroin, cocaine, meth, and now fentanyl, where two little grains is enough to kill an individual, were seized in the United States. To date this year, nearly 101,000 pounds of these substances have already been seized and we’re just halfway through the year. Narcotics production funds the insurgency in Afghanistan, the world’s largest supplier of illicit opium. The United States does not have a dedicated counter-narcotics plan in this country, so I think you’re right, Mr. Chairman. We gotta get cracking and build one that works. The drug trade fuels staggering levels of violence and corruption. In Mexico, it’s estimated that 1/3 to 1/2 of the 33,000 murders committed in 2018 were related to drug trafficking and organized criminal activity. Only 21% of these cases went to trial. The former head of Venezuela’s military intelligence was recently arrested in Spain on drug trafficking charges, on a warrant issued by the United States. The global narcotics trade requires us to address both our own demand issue, as well as foreign supply, and the State Department plays a critical role in all of this, as it coordinates US foreign assistance for counter-narcotics. So there’s much to be done. I’m gonna stop here, I’ll put my full remarks in the record, but thank you so much for being willing to come to the Hill to advise us and hopefully to work with this caucus. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Senator Feinstein. Mr. Secretary, we are grateful, as Senator Feinstein has said, for you being here today and you may proceed with any opening statement you’d like to make.
Great. Thank you, thank you Senator Cornyn, thank you Senator Feinstein, thanks for the opportunity to be here. I’m really happy to be here. This is an important issue. When you think of the State Department, it is not the first thing that comes to the top of one’s mind, often, but know that inside the organization, it is something that is a true priority for us, that’s why I was so happy to be invited here today. I’ll be very brief, ’cause I wanna have a good conversation today, but you should all know that like many of you, this is personal for me. I know many people have been impacted by this set of issues. Just last month, there were seven Kansans died in a 10 hour period from a single overdose of cocaine laced with fentanyl. It’s a serious matter. We talk about these big numbers, but we all know human lives that have been touched and families that have been ripped apart by this. The State Department has a role here. Many US government agencies do. Most of the opioids sold in the United States are manufactured and trafficked into this country from abroad. That’s where our talents and skills and the team comes to bear. We have a clear role here. I want to talk for just a minute about what we’re doing in a couple of areas, and I know we’ll dig into them each a little bit further. First, we’ve really focused on China, because of the increase in fentanyl in the last two and a half years, in this administration. Purchased online often, and delivered directly to users and dealers through the mail, or often shipped through Mexico as well. Not only is the State Department, the Justice Department, and our inter-agency partners who have been working closely with China, I’ve had numerous conversations with them. On May 1st, China fulfilled its pledge to President Trump to control all fentanyl-like substances, which potentially number in the thousands of different substances, and develop an enforcement plan for each of them. We need to work closely with them. To follow up on these encourage signs, there should be new criminal penalties, I’m convinced that they will do that, and I’m convinced that this will shut down labs inside of China and will save lives here in the United States. In Latin America, the problem’s a little bit different in nature, Mexico remains a production hub for methamphetamines and heroin, and it’s a transit country for cocaine, fentanyl, and other drugs. As recently as last week, as part of our conversations about migration, we touched deeply on how it is we can work more closely together. The joint declaration we signed was mostly focused on migration, but a good deal of the conversation was to your point, Senator Cornyn, about the traffickers’ desire to move whatever product will bring a market price that causes them to have an incentive to continue to do the things that disrupt so many lives here in the United States. We’ll try and take down these criminal enterprises, between all of the elements of the United States government. We’ve donated equipment to the Mexican law enforcement and security forces, we’ve trained their officers to eradicate poppy and interdict drugs. We’ve provided them sniffing dogs and yet, as you can see from the data today, many challenges remain. Just a couple words about the rest of the hemisphere, I met with President Duque multiple occasions. Both occasions, he continued to pledge his strong support to stop drug trafficking and to reduce the coca fields. There is a lot of work left to do. We are working to get the direction, the magnitude of that problem, to turn the corner, to begin to decrease production inside of Colombia. We’ve quadrupled the number of civilian eradicators alongside of them, and while the payoff has not yet demonstrated the effect we would like, it is fair to say that Colombia has destroyed over 60% more coca in the first four months of this year than they did in those same four months of last year. But there’s a host of other countries, but I’ve gone on too long. I’m happy to take your questions and talk about other things, and I’ll submit the full statement for the record, with your permission, senator.
Well, thank you, Mr. Secretary. It’ll be made part of the record without objection. We’ll start with six minute rounds, and I know the secretary has been very gracious with his time, but we want to make sure that we get him out of here in due course, and we also have the second round of witnesses, and we have votes this afternoon, so we’re gonna be kind of busy. Let me just start with this general question that we’d talked about a little bit in the anteroom. As I think about US government strategies and plans to deal with different things from narco-traffickers to instability in South America, in this instance, I think of Plan Colombia, and that was the one success story, I believe, even though, as you point out, your conversations with President Duque to deal with the eradication issue is very important and we obviously need to see a reversal of the continued proliferation of coca in Colombia, but are there things that you think we can learn from Plan Colombia that we could then apply to a broader regional strategy? I know having a strong partner like we had in President Uribe during the toughest parts of Plan Colombia, and also having a bipartisan congressional support so it did not lapse with each presidential election. Share with us just some of your general thoughts about that, please.
Well, Senator Cornyn, those are two very important things. First, and the State Department’s role is to make sure we find the right partners inside of these countries. It needs to come from their most senior levels in their country, you talked about President Uribe. I think we have that in many of the countries we have described, and then working through their agencies, right, not only on the United States side is this response often fragmented, it’s often fragmented on the trafficking country’s side as well. We could be dealing with their immigration authorities, their local and state and federal law enforcement officials, and so there has to be, as Plan Colombia achieved, a coordination mechanism so that, while there’s no silver bullet, you have all the elements of power both on the US side and on the other country’s side, working alongside of each other. I think those are the building blocks that allow you to deliver. And then what we were successful in Plan Colombia as well, was developing a plan that had duration to it. You talked about needing bipartisan support. That’s important because we have elections here every couple of years and we change presidents from time to time, and these problems elongate far past any particular administration or any particular Congress. And so it does take a level of commitment, consistent resources, consistent priorities inside of the US bureaucracy, inside the United States government, so that the efforts that are put in place aren’t ripped out, turned 180 degrees each time there’s a change in leadership or a change in Congress.
Mr. Secretary, that’s very helpful. Obviously, in terms of our relationship with Mexico, I also think about the Merida Initiative, which I know we’ll hear more about from the other witnesses, some people will say, well, we need to send more money to Central America. Well, to me, that’s sort of putting the cart in front of the horse. We need to actually have a plan, and, I think, be able to tell the American people that yes, we are sending assistance to these countries, but it’s targeted. We have a good way to follow the money and make sure it’s not being stolen, and it’s being used for the intended purposes. And yes, we have a plan in place and metrics we can use to measure the success. One of the things that has been discussed is the possibility of a special envoy for this region. Can you tell us within the context of the State Department and your experience with the executive branch of government, do you think something like a special envoy for this region would be something that we should consider and continue our discussions about?
Senator, when you say that, you mean with respect to this set of issues?
Yes.
A special envoy tasked to handle the broad set of issues, sort of like a Plan Colombia more broadly for the region, is that what you were thinking of?
[John] Yes.
You know, I’d have to think it through. I do think, and you’ve seen me at the State Department, where we had particular problems that we prioritized, to identify someone to pin the rose on, so to speak, someone who had both the authority and the responsibility, accountability connected to bringing all the elements of power together, so that might make sense here. We, each of the elements of the United States government that has a deliverable associated with the metrics that you described we’d need to lay out, would need to be on board with that, couldn’t just be a State Department special envoy, it would be maybe someone who has the scope and capacity to command all of the resources connected to this problem set. If we could achieve that, it might well make sense.
Well, I hope we can continue the conversation with you and other members of the administration about how to accomplish that, the best way to deal with that. I wonder, even though your negotiations, yours and the vice president with the Mexican foreign minister here recently, the conversations that you’ve had with president, well, President Obrador, have been mainly focused on the migration issue. I’ve been struck as somebody, obviously, Texas shares a 400-mile common border with Mexico. I’ve followed Mexico for my entire career, and I have never seen Mexican officials appear to step up and engage as it looks like they are doing now on this Central American migration issue, and I wonder if you could just comment on that, because I think if that is real and if it’s enduring, that could be transformational in terms of our relationship not only with Mexico, but dealing with all of these issues in Mexico and Central America. So could you give us, just offer some of your general thoughts about what’s changed and how did we get here? And how do we get more of that kind of cooperation?
Yeah, so I’ve been at this for two and a half years, in my previous role with CIA, I had a connection to working on primarily the TCOs, but in this role have been involved in the migration issue, at least at the diplomatic level, working between the two countries to set up policies. There are lots of other elements. The United States government have an important, and indeed, dispositive roles. You know, when the president raised the specter of the tariff, we made more progress in the course of a couple days than we had been able to make over the course of the preceding, goodness, I would guess I’ve been the Secretary of State for almost a year and three months now. I think it focused the attention of all of us, and made us more willing to set up true metrics, deliverables, and a set of policies that I am hopeful will deliver on the outcome that I am convinced President Obrador wants and President Trump wants, to stem this flow of illegal migration, which will have a secondary benefit of reducing the capacity for these traffickers to move drugs as well, the topic of our gathering today. I think it’s something President Obrador made very clear to me and to his team in the course of, goodness, what, two and a half days of discussions we had with them. They were serious about allowing us to do some things that they wouldn’t let us do before, with respect to the MPP, the migration protocols. Now the task is to deliver that. The task is for both governments to work together. I spoke with my foreign secretary counterpart again this morning, I am confident we will continue to talk on a near daily basis to make sure that we can actually execute what both countries committed to when we were together for those two and a half days at the end of last week. It will benefit both countries. We’re, got a team being dispatched to Guatemala this evening to work on another element of this plan in Guatemala over the next couple days, and we’ll move through the Northern Triangle to try and get a regional approach to stem the traffickers, to stem the flow of illegal migration through Mexico into the United States. It will be all about the execution, but the will and the capacity creation that needed to take place, I’m convinced were demonstrated last week.
Well, as you pointed out, migration and drug trafficking are arguably distinct issues, but they do overlap here in talking about our relationships. But as border patrol has told us, when they are overwhelmed by this mass influx of humanity coming across our ports of entry, customs and border protection officers, border patrol, have to be assigned different duties to take care of children and families and the drug cartels use, do exploit that chaos and uncertainty to move more of their poison into the United States, so they are, I think it’s impossible to separate them entirely, but thank you for your response to that. Senator Feinstein?
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, for FY 19, 22 countries were identified as major drug transit or drug producing countries. These are primarily located in Central and South America, as well as Asia. Given its limited counter-narcotics budget, how can State help determine where to concentrate its efforts as well as our efforts?
Senator Feinstein, that’s a excellent question. So we try, not only during each budget cycle, as we’re presenting proposals to you for the budget, but throughout the year as we’re watching, we try to set priorities. And to the point Senator Cornyn made, we’re trying to deliver best value for each dollar we spend. We’re trying to find the places where we can have the most impact, being mindful too that there are times where the impact isn’t measurable in the immediate run, that there was a buildup period. You have to create capacities inside of some of these countries that don’t have them. I think you can look to, not only our budget requests, as a measure of where our priority is, not only within each country, but within the various tools, not just the State Department tools, but the tools that are at CBP and the monies that are requested for all the other agencies involved in these set of issues to see how we think about approaching that problem set.
Next question. Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are a few of the countries identified as major transit countries for illicit narcotics destined for us, the United States. In light of the president’s recent decision to reduce United States assistance to these countries, how will the State Department reduce the flow? I’ve been thinking about doing, we did Plan Colombia several years ago. In many ways it’s been a success, and it’s been costly. I think the numbers are up to 10 billion now, but we’ve got real problems in Central America, and I’ve been wondering what might we do in a Plan Central America that would provide the incentives for the changes that we need to restore the coffee industry, to prevent drugs from developing, to prevent some of the cartels and terrible things that are happening there as well as people feeling they have no alternative but to leave. Has your department taken a look at this? And do you have any thoughts as to whether a Plan Central America might be viable if we were able to do the right things?
Senator Feinstein, I’m not sure we have something we’d call Plan Central America, but there’s been lots of work done at the State Department on this issue. Look, you know, the president ordered cessation on the FY 17 funding that was going there. We carved out two significant sets of programs, the DOJ programs and the DHS programs that related to many of the issues we’re talking about because we felt they were important. I must say, we’re continuing to look at each of them too to figure out, we’ve been at this two year point of our Plan Colombia, we’ve been at these programs for just a long time, and the charts that we show today demonstrate that we haven’t gotten where we all want to be. I suppose one could argue it would be worse had we not done it, perhaps that’s the case, but they certainly haven’t delivered the outcomes that these programs were pitched on, so we’re trying to figure out, to your point, what are the right incentives? And it may vary by each of those Northern Triangle countries, what are the right incentives that we can put in place so that the countries themselves, the people in those countries and their leadership, will conclude that there’s another way, there’s a different way for people to earn a living, and there’s a different enforcement mechanism that those countries can withstand and have the capacity for.
Well, if the chairman would agree, would you agree to share some of this material with this caucus so that we might be able to take a look at it?
Yes, ma’am.
See if we can come up with something?
I certainly would. I’d certainly be happy to have the true experts in our organization who are thinking about this every day and that have talked to you about how they’re thinking about what the approach might look like in 2019 and beyond.
Well, that would be very helpful. How do you determine where to concentrate your efforts? What criteria do you use?
So I think, Senator Feinstein, it may have been you in your opening statement, or Senator Cornyn, talked about how dynamic this is. I’ll give you the case of fentanyl. While it’s not new, it’s newer than some of these older challenges and this source in China, while not new, is newer too. If you were to ask about this when we were dealing with some of these problems when Plan Colombia was created, you’d have had a different priority. One of the challenges we face is when budgets get set and plans get laid in place, and then the bad guys move more quickly than we do, they adapt. We don’t always have the right tools. We should plan for that change as well, and build into our plans sufficient flexibility that can respond. When we think about priorities today, we think we’ve got, if you just look at the loss of life, the impact on families here in the United States today, fentanyl is near the top of the list, and we also think we have a partner with whom we can engage and have a serious conversation about how to take down a substantial piece of that risk, so we put a lot of effort on working with China to try and stop it at its source. We’re not there yet. There’s a lot of execution that still has to go into it, but we have a real commitment and not only at the most senior levels, which is important and necessary, but as we work through the levels of government there who will actually be tasked with executing that, we’ve seen, literally in the last several weeks, a real commitment to working towards getting this right outcome. It will take time. This won’t be next week or even next month. So when, you asked the question quite simply, we try to put a focus on the thing that can reduce the cost to the United States, cost in lives, cost in all the other dimensions, the most quickly for the fewest resources, and focus those resources on, essentially, the highest return projects, at least as we can identify them.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. Senator Grassley?
I refer to a letter I sent to State, Homeland Security, FBI, and Department of Defense. It was in regard to an interview you gave in which you confirmed that there’s active Hezbollah cells in Venezuela, and of course, everything going on in Venezuela is just something that gets our attention very quickly. Hezbollah’s proximity, or Venezuela’s proximity to our border increases their scope of influence, and also allows other foreign adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran, to strengthen their existing power hubs. When looking at global counter-narcotics, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the effect of drug trafficking organizations, transnational criminal organizations, and terrorist groups. In fact, by many accounts, state weakness and powerful criminal organizations are a direct result of drug trafficking. So, my first question. What role does Hezbollah play in organized drug trafficking? What other related criminal and terrorist activity exists as a result of money generated by trafficking drugs?
You bet. So the answer to your first question is, I wouldn’t put it at the top of the list in terms of bad actors and volume for drugs. That’s not the case, but they are active in Venezuela, and in the tri-zonal region there in South America, they are active. It is mostly a money-making enterprise, that is, it is designed to generate revenues for Hezbollah and its activities which are largely conducted in the Middle East, to help them make payroll throughout the Middle East. But Senator Grassley, to your point, all the negative follow-ons from that activity flow through those regions, all the things that hang around, the trafficking, the violence, all the issues that surround business enterprises that center on narcotics flow, exist as a result of Hezbollah’s role there in South America as well.
Amongst the ongoing political unrest in Venezuela, how can the State Department ensure that drug trafficking organizations and other criminal and terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, don’t grow stronger?
It’s very difficult.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
I just say this, it doesn’t mean we’re giving up. We’re certainly working on it. We have folks working on the border between Venezuela and Colombia, the Brazilian border, all of the places that we can touch and reach, but it is the case that we no longer even have an embassy in Venezuela, so it is difficult for us to do that. So we monitor, collect intelligence, and attempt to identify networks and work on them in places that surround Venezuela.
I wanna go to money laundering. Criminal elements are less likely to deal drugs if they can’t benefit financially from the crime. Likewise, drug trafficking organizations are heavily reliant on international banking system to fund their operations. How effective are our current anti-money laundering laws and existing sanction programs in destabilizing transnational criminal organizations and targeting the proceeds of drug trafficking?
Well, to give a qualitative answer to that, we spend a lot of resources on it, mostly Treasury, in terms of the banking system, but connected to what the intelligence community and the State Department has a role there as well. Clearly not sufficient, Senator Grassley, your point is well taken. There are still spaces where money can move, the AML laws, the anti-money laundering laws are good, they’re effective, they give us the resources and tools, and we force a lot of the resources to move through cash systems, non-international banking systems, but there’s still more work to do there.
Is there any change of law or help you need from Congress in that regard? Have you suggested anything? If you do, now is an opportunity to repeat it.
Senator Grassley, if you will, I’d love to have Treasury give you the answer to that in writing.
So it’s more a Treasury than a–
Money laundering, we have a tiny role in this. This is really a Treasury matter more than it is State. We work on that same set of issues, and the designations that flow from those often are State Department designations, but the most important work in the banking system is done by Treasury.
Okay, this might be my last question. Colombia is the world’s leading producer of cocaine. Plan Colombia we’ve talked about, we put a lot of money into it. The financial assistance has supported eradication and interdiction efforts as well as alternative development. What steps has the State Department taken to evaluate the effectiveness of eradication and interdiction to reducing the supply of cocaine in Colombia?
Senator, we have published data and we will continue to publish data, so has the intelligence community, about hectares under cultivation. There’s still a lot of work to do. There’s an important court decision that’ll take place in Colombia, I think, by late summer or early fall, which will either permit or deny President Duque for the capacity to do aerial spraying, which is an important tool that they need for interdiction and destruction of these coca fields, but we have really good data, and I think we have our hands around it. We work alongside our Colombian counterparts. We, the United States government, works in the eradication business and when President Duque took over, I will say, he has built back these teams. It is hard work, it is manual, physical work. When you can’t do aerial spraying, it is manual, physical work, and he has built back the teams that are taking down these things at loss of life to Colombian law enforcement officials. I think President Duque is making a sincere effort to get this coca production inside of his country going back in the right direction, a real reduction, year on year.
Thank you very much.
Senator Perdue?
Mr. Chairman, thank you. It’s an honor to be on this caucus. I want to thank you and the ranking member for the bipartisan way that you approach this problem. This is not about politics, it’s about our national security. Mr. Secretary, I know you’ve got a million other priorities. Thank you for this time today you’re giving us. I wanna focus on Mexico, and my first question. Having worked down there pretty much, most of the last 30 years inside Mexico and in Central America, the cartels are really still the problem. And right now, this week, in my state alone in Georgia, we’ll lose 40 people to drug overdose. 40 people this week. You know the numbers. At half a trillion dollars, 500 billion dollars, that makes the cartel business and the drug traffic, just in Mexico alone coming across to the United States, bigger than Walmart, to put it in perspective. So this is larger than our largest companies. And on the human scale, just this month, we’ll give the cartels over a billion dollars, or somehow they’ll earn a billion dollars just from the human traffic coming through the southern border, just in the stipend, the $5,000, $8,000 fee that they charge the cartel. And I was just down at the southern border a few weeks ago out on patrol with our CBP, and Mr. Secretary, I can tell you they are the best that we have. They are doing a fantastic job. They’re just overwhelmed, 140,000 people this week. My question is this. If a cartel was sending a cruise missile into Dallas, Texas and killing 70,000 people, I think our response would be just a little less measured than it is today. And so my question, it’s not necessarily just a State Department issue, it’s also a Defense issue, a Treasury issue, you’ve mentioned several just this morning. How can we, on top of the Merida Initiative, and I want to get to Cordy later in Central America. What else can we do to put these cartels out of business? We’ve been trying to do this since the term narco-politics came to Central America 50 years ago. What can we do to put these cartels out of business? ‘Cause they are really the ones that are benefiting from this tragic disaster we have.
Senator Perdue, I wish I thought there was a silver bullet to this, I don’t believe that. I believe it takes sustained effort, sustained effort from the United States all across the United States government, and importantly, sustained effort from our partner countries. It is the case that there are spaces in Mexico where these cartels have enormous capacity and the risk of corruption is very very real, and the ability to control that real estate and deny them the capacity is the same, you mentioned other fights, right? The counter-terror fight, we see this all the time with that, right, we took down the caliphate, we took down the piece of real estate. That makes it harder, it raises the cost for them to act in ways that are harmful to the United States. We have to act with that same rigor, and to do that we need host countries that have capability. That will require us, in some cases, to help underwrite that and to provide them the resources, the tools that they need to deliver those outcomes, outcomes that benefit them, Mexico, as you’ve been talking about, but will have an enormous benefit for the United States as well. And if you look back, and I can’t do 50 years, but I’ve looked back 20, 25 years. We haven’t applied these tools consistently. Sometimes that’s because we’ve made changes in our policy, but sometimes, it’s been because of changes in governments inside of the countries that we’re trying to deal, and they resist or they want to try a different approach inside of the country, so we haven’t had, we haven’t had a sustained, focused effort in the same way we’ve been able to do in some other national security arenas to fight this, what I think, your point is well taken, is a true threat to the way of life here in the United States of America.
In the Cabinet, it’s not just a State Department issue, it’s not just a Defense issue. Do you guys talk about this as a cross-Cabinet responsibility? And the specific comment I want to make is, General Kelly, when he was SOUTHCOM commander, made the comment to Congress that they could see 85% of the drugs coming out of Latin America, but we could only interdict somewhere around 15%. In your mind, do you agree with that assessment? Secondly, what can State Department and Defense do together to improve the effectiveness, if you will, in interdiction? And I know it goes back to some of the same answers that you just gave, in terms of partners and all that, but there’s no silver bullet here either.
No, that’s right. Yeah, I think that data’s about right. It is the case, we can see a lot of what happens, but haven’t been able to impact the flow and interdict the flows. It’s also the case that where we’ve had successful interdiction and we’ve cut off particular mechanisms, means, routes, transit, the bad guys find another tool. So even when you stop one, they find another path forward. I think, when I stare at some of these, some of these end up being Coast Guard issues, right, as you’re describing some of these routes, that I think General Kelly would have been referring to. Some of them are overland routes, some of them are flying in in aircraft to short runways in dark places. It is a multi-faceted task, and frankly, there’s two things, right, there’s the capacity of the host country, and then there’s resource application, so if you were to say, what could we do better with respect to interdiction, I’m sure we could be more efficient with the resources that we have so we can deliver against the mission set with the resources provided. But I’m also confident that were more resources applied we’d be able to attack multiple vectors simultaneously, and sometimes I know we’re making trade-offs.
Well, my time has expired, Mr. Chairman, I owe you a bet. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here–
Thank you, senator.
And thank you for your candid answers. Mr. Secretary, while Senator Whitehouse is collecting his thoughts, let me just ask you a couple other cleaned up questions. I know that the United States has been focused like a laser on the threats emanating from the Middle East. Obviously, the attack on our country on 9/11, emanating from Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq, and it seems to me that we have just not had the same sort of focus on what’s happening on our southern border, what’s happening in Mexico and Central America. I’m not criticizing, I’m just stating that as, I believe, a fact. And then I think historically, there’s been this idea that certainly in Mexico, that this was not their problem, this was our problem.
Right. A demand side problem.
Exactly. And there’s a lot of truth to that, and we’ve struggled to try to find some way to deal with the demand side, because we know if there’s demand, there’s gonna be a supply. Senator Feinstein and I have done some work in that area, but it’s just really scratching the surface. But I also think, in terms of of your earlier testimony about the developing relationship between the Lopez Obrador administration and the Trump administration, dealing with this migrant crisis. There really is, strikes me as a change of approach and attitude. Rather than the United States doing something to these countries, we are linking arms and doing something with them, and something that represents a common challenge for both of our countries, to be sure. And when I hear Mexico talking about issuing work permits, perhaps granting asylum to some of the Central Americans in their country, I wonder whether some of the money that ordinarily we would say, let’s just send it to Central America, whether there isn’t more we can do to help Mexico with the facilities, with the training, with the infrastructure they need in order to be of greater assistance, if they’re willing to do so, which it looks like they are beginning to have that attitude, whether there’s more we can do to help Mexico with that sort of assistance, which will directly, inure to our benefit.
Senator Cornyn, I think you’re right, though this government’s been in power for seven months now. My sense is they’re getting their feet underneath them too, with respect to these issues as well. They understand the risk it presents to their country, to Senator Perdue’s point, these cartels that operate there, they know are no good for them, they present risk to us, and then I guess, so I do think there’s opportunity, then I guess the last thing I’d say is, it is also the case, and you said this right, markets form when there’s demand. And so all of the interdiction, all of the work that we do, so long as there’s demand, I suppose if you can stop enough you can raise the cost dramatically, and perhaps the demand would shrink because there’s resource constraint. But we’ve got to work both sides of this problem if we’re going to get to the ultimate solution.
Thank you. Senator Whitehouse?
[Sheldon] Thank you, Chairman Cornyn. I appreciate this hearing. Thank you, Mr. Secretary–
Yes, sir.
[Sheldon] For being here. Rhode Island is not among the very worst states, with respect to our opioid problem, but we are experiencing a serious enough opioid problem that we were in that small group of states that qualified for the supplemental funds that we organized here in the Senate. Many thanks to Senator Shaheen for her work to make that happen. What we have seen is, because of a lot of good work in our home state, our opioid overdose deaths are tailing off and actually starting to decline. Not a lot of states can say that, but we’ve had some real successes. It’s not robust enough a signal to be able to confirm that it relates to the policy changes that we’ve put in place, but it sure is a heck of a lot better than going the other way. Within that number, however, fentanyl deaths are still going up.
They’ve exploited it.
So the deaths overall from overdose are coming down, the fentanyl deaths are going up.
28,000.
And we’re seeing, as you have probably experienced elsewhere, a need for our law enforcement professionals to undertake various protective measures to keep themselves safe when they come into contact with crime scenes, because of the really extraordinary concentration in which fentanyl is distributed. So you may have mentioned this already, but I’m interested in what you think the prospects are with China. I can remember in the last administration being one of the voices for having the Department of Justice go out and indict some people over some of this stuff. And there’s a lot that can be done. What’s your current state of play with the Chinese, and what do you think, what are your top two or three goals with them to try to get them to quit manufacturing the fentanyl for US distribution, illicit distribution?
Yeah. Senator, thanks. So President Xi made a personal commitment to President Trump that he would direct his team to work this. We have seen, literally, I guess I would describe them, the last two months, a true change in our interactions with him on this issue. They’ve now put in place a set of requirements that will list all of the various variants, if you will, that will put ’em on their list, essentially, like our controlled substance list. And so that’s all good. The interactions that we’ve had at the working level with the Chinese government over these weeks has been very positive. The proof, Senator Whitehouse, is in the delivery. It is in, can we physically observe these facilities being shut down, can we physically observe the movement of these products, right? We have an interdiction rate. We assume we get some percentage of that that comes across. Can we see these numbers begin to come down, transiting from China, either straight here or through Mexico, which is often the route as well. There’s still a lot of work to be done, both between the United States and China, and the United States and Mexico on this fentanyl issue. But I’m very hopeful that the Chinese government will continue to take this seriously and begin to take actions inside of the country which will reduce the flow. By the way, we’re working with all the various means of distribution, the United States Postal Service, all of the people who touch these products to try and close it down, raise the cost here in the United States and decrease the volume of flow. I’m hopeful, but we’re still working too.
[Sheldon] What are some benchmarks that we should look for that would let us know that this is working?
I don’t want to be trite, right? We have a sense of what came in in January and February and March, and we need to see that number decline. So much as we do with migration, where we measure apprehensions, which isn’t the perfect market, to be sure, but I think interdictions, that is, the amount of flow that we can see and touch and feel, and then second–
Well, we’re hoping that will go up because of whether we’ve done to improve the postal service and the package delivery people.
[Mike] It’s always a mixed bag. It’s always a mixed bag.
We wouldn’t wanna lose the signal and have it be–
No, that’s right.
Our better interdiction.
We have the same thing with migration, we have the same thing in every place we go. It’s absolutely the case that the better you get, you also hope though, that that raises cost and improves deterrence, right? And then the last thing is, we ought to be able to see inside of China. We have a sense of some of the production mechanisms there. We ought to be able to see reduction of that on the ground, inside of their country as well.
Thank you. If you don’t mind, just since we have you here, I’ll mention two other quick things. One, we have very strong bipartisan work happening here in the Senate on marine plastic waste. The president signed our bill, spoke very strongly about his irritation with the five Asian nations that provide more than 50% of the plastic waste because they don’t bother to take care of their upland waste disposal in a responsibile way, and yet, I keep reading news clips that say that where we’re negotiating on these issues internationally, it’s always the US that is dragging on that, when it seems that the signal from Congress is we’re going forward, we like this, we’re doing this in a bipartisan fashion, and the signal from the president seems very good to me as well, so any signal that you could send to encourage your troops to not be the anchor that everybody else has to drag, but instead be leaders in this area would be helpful.
I’m happy to do it right here. I have this, this is important, this is priority, it is bipartisan, to your point. It is executive and legislative branch together. I hope my team’s not dragging their feet, and the second thing I’ll commit to is I will go validate that I hope the reports that you’re reading are incorrect. We ought not be doing that, and I will do more than discourage it, if in fact I find that’s the case.
I’m sorry, my time has exceeded by 34 seconds.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Secretary, thank you for being with us today. We know you’ve got many demands on your time, but we’re grateful for the time you’ve spent here with us, and we look forward to continuing the conversation and working with you and the rest of the administration to address these, the multifarious challenges that come from our proximity to Central America and Mexico, so thank you very much.
[Mike] Thank you very much. Thank you all.
Thank you. (people shuffling)
I hope you don’t mind me going a little bit off script there, but I felt that–
Let me invite our next panel, please, to come up and have a seat. (people mumbling and shuffling)