From what I understand, a lot of these cartels are basically well-armed militias themselves. I think people assume it’s just a bunch of street-style gangsters, but there’s a reason the cartels successfully run entire chunks of Mexico. The Mexican military doesn’t fight them for a reason. Like every other half-baked piece of shit idea these people have, it probably won’t work as intended. As Juice mentioned earlier when they grabbed Maduro, it was a stupid fucking idea that wasn’t well thought out. Now Trump is embarrassed because the oil companies aren’t jumping for joy and sending their employees immediately to be attacked and probably killed by various rebel groups and militias. His understanding of anything is laughable.
I like how his argument is that his illegal fuckup was so huge it would be disastrous to attempt to fix it.
You would basically need to hit them with predator drones or set the Tier 1 units loose. The current suspicion is the current President of Mexico is league with the cartels (actual suspicion, not Trump Admin suspicion).