President Donald Trump says he will "absolutely" designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups because of they kill tens of thousands of Americans annually and play a huge role in drug and human trafficking.
"They will be designated ... I have been working on that for the last 90 days. You know, designation is not that easy, you have to go through a process, and we are well into that process," Trump said in an interview with conservative media personality Bill O'Reilly that was posted to his website Tuesday.
Trump offered no timetable for such a designation.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday that he didn’t want to enter a “political confrontation” on the eve of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. López Obrador said he instructed Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard to explain Mexico’s position to Washington.
Ebrard tweeted later that he’d been in touch with the U.S. and would use diplomacy to "defend sovereignty."
Material from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report.
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