Since entering the White House, the Biden administration moved quickly to undo most of what former President Donald Trump fought hard to accomplish. And over the last two years, as a result, the Southern Border struggled to contain the massive hordes of illegal immigrants making their way to the United States. While both Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden refuse to speak on the issue, taking a look at Mexico shows an eruption of violence. Just in the last week alone, 11 people died, and four radio station employees and a child were shot. With violence escalating, citizens desperately want to know what the Jalisco cartel wants. 

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Most of the attacks seen by the drug cartels in Mexico happened in the city of Ciudad Jaurez, which isn’t that far from El Paso, Texas. A few days before, cartels targeted a national chain of convenience stores as over 24 stores were looted and burned. That happened in the state of Guanajuato. On Friday, Jalisco state, cars and buses were stolen and set on fire in numerous cities along the California border. 

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To restore order in the states, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador used the National Guard and the military to help calm the violence and restore faith within the community. But some residents are fearful of both the cartels and the President’s dependence on the military to fix the issue. 

Discussing the ongoing violence and unrest in Mexico, Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said, “I think that the orders that were given to these gunmen was to cause chaos. Generate chaos, generate uncertainty, generate fear, shoot at anything that moves. That is something that generates terror.”

With some claiming the violence were acts of terrorism, Hope added, “Terrorism implies a political goal. I don’t know what the political goal is in this case.”

Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero had an entirely different approach when it came to dealing with the cartels. She simply asked them to stop targeting citizens. “Today, we are saying to the organized crime groups that are committing these crimes that Tijuana is going to remain open and take care of its citizens. And we also ask them to settle their debts with those who didn’t pay what they owe, not with families and hard-working citizens.”

According to José Andrés Sumano Rodríguez, who is a security specialist, the violence on civilians was a calculated move. He said the cartels “have learned that when they pressure on the side of generating terror and attacks on civilians, it gives them good results. Often it is much more effective to do this than have direct confrontation with the armed forces, where they are almost always going to lose.”