Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard opposes terrorist designation for murderous cartels.

Last month, a Mexican drug cartel murdered nine U.S. citizens, three mothers and six of their children, including an infant of eight months. President Trump offered help in taking down the murderers but Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, AMLO, turned down the offer.

In short order, President Trump announced plans to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTO), a classification for which they are fully qualified. That got the attention of Mexico’s ruling class.

“Our problems will be solved by Mexicans,” AMLO told reporters. “We don’t want any interference from any foreign country.” That was no surprise from the man who said the murder of nine Americans was “lamentable,” and who announced a strategy of “abrazos, no balazos,” – “hugs not bullets” – to deal with the cartels.

Also worthy of attention was the response of Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard. As he proclaimed, “Mexico will never admit any action that would be a violation of its national sovereignty.” It was not a new theme for the Mexican foreign minister, a former mayor of Mexico City and a presidential hopeful his own self.

After President Trump cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and threatened to shut down the border with Mexico, Ebrard proclaimed, “Mexico does not act on the basis of threats. We are a great neighbor.” Americans might wonder about that.

In November, 2016 Ebrard told Francisco Goldman of the New Yorker Mexicans in the United States feel threatened by the “xenophobia” of Donald Trump, whom Ebrard compared to Hitler. So Ebrard “decided to get more involved” by getting out the vote on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Ebrard made it clear this was “direct political action” on behalf of Clinton and it all went down without any charges of collusion or election interference.

Clinton is an open-borders candidate and Mexico encourages its nationals to violate U.S. immigration law and U.S. sovereignty. This is because Mexicans abroad, the vast majority in the United States, send back more than $33 billion in remittances every year. That is not possible without massive inputs from American taxpayers. So contrary to AMLO, Mexican problems are not being solved by Mexicans alone.

AMLO and Ebrard have no problem with caravans of Central Americans marching through their territory en route to the United States. That sort of human trafficking would be impossible without Mexican collaboration, and the Mexican government has proved incapable of dealing with cartel violence, which AMLO’s abrazos will do nothing to deter. That crowd needs bolazos, but there’s more to the FTO designation.

As Rachel Bovard notes at American Greatness, “the cartels flourish because of the complicity of government officials, many of whom are paid handsomely by the cartels.” In many ways, the cartels are “intertwined with the rest of the Mexican state,” diversifying into oil and gas, agriculture and commercial fishing. These activities, are aided by a host of bankers, politicians, lawyers and accountants.

An FTO designation, Bovard notes, “would make it much more difficult to carry on this activity with impunity.” Once a group is designated FTO, “it is illegal for people in the United States knowingly to offer their support to the group and its members cannot enter the country.” In addition, financial institutions that become aware they have funds connected to the group “must block the money and alert the Treasury Department.”

Bovard also recalls that the murder of the nine Americans came on the heels of a cartel victory in which “heavily armed cartel gunmen fought the government with military weapons in a conflict that looked like something out of Yemen, rather than mere miles from the U.S. border.” So the FTO designation could make way for raids like the one that took out al-Baghdadi.

President Trump knows that you have to deal with people on a level they understand. The president has good cause to ignore pleas of sovereignty from gutless cartel huggy-boy AMLO and Marcel Ebrard, who brags about campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

On all levels, the foreign terrorist designation makes sense for cartels that murder innocent women and children. It would also makes sense to require that American politicians who spend taxpayer dollars on illegals register as agents of the various governments of those foreign nationals, primarily Mexico.

By the count of attorney general Xavier Becerra, California alone harbors more than 10 million illegals, approximately the population of Portugal. Democrats give the illegals in-state tuition, welfare benefits and the administration of Gavin Newsom will spend nearly $100 million on health care for illegals.

Sanctuary laws protect the illegals from deportation, even the violent criminals among them. In October, Mexican national Juan Carlos Vasquez Orozco, illegally present in the United States, was charged with the murder of California sheriff’s deputy Brian Ishmael.

Governor Newsom was a no-show at the officer’s funeral. The governor’s reprieve of more than 700 convicted murderers included Mexican national Luis Bracamontes, who in 2014 murdered Sacramento County police officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. During his trial, the Mexican said he wished he had killed more cops.