Former Homeland Security secretary says the cartels should be 'public enemy number one'

Former acting secretary of the Homeland Security Department Chad Wolf says that the cartels at the southern border should be "public enemy number one."

"The cartels should be public enemy number one," Wolf said on the Thursday edition of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "And we should be discussing and having real debates about what to do about the cartels and what to do about the Mexican government."

The southern border has been a hot button issue in American politics for the past few years, specifically regarding the Mexican drug cartels that have been actively trafficking people and drugs across the border.

"All options should be on the table to really target and to go after those cartels when they kill that many Americans every single day and over 100,000 in any given year," Wolf said. "They should be public enemy number one."

According to a March poll from Rasmussen Reports, 69% of Americans support designating the cartels as terrorist groups, with 80% of Republicans backing such a measure and 65% of Democrats concurring. 

"These are not easy decisions, but they're decisions that Americans want their federal government to tackle," Wolf said. "Instead, this administration continues to look at what's going on and just kind of shrugs their shoulders and says, 'Well, the cartels have always been there and that's just how it is.' I don't accept that I don't think the majority of Americans accept that."