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attorneys are consistently using the tools at their disposal in cases with violent offenders, including pursuing mandatory minimum sentences under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).** The department should also support legislative efforts to provide further tools, such as the Restoring the Armed Career Criminal Act, which Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) introduced in 2021 in response to U.S. Supreme Court decisions neutering the ACCA.*

• Enforce the death penalty where appropriate and applicable. Capital punishment is a sensitive matter, as it should be, but the current crime wave makes deterrence vital at the federal, state, and local levels. However, providing this punishment without ever enforcing it provides justice neither for the victims’ families nor for the defendant. The next conservative Administration should therefore do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row. It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes—particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children—until Congress says otherwise through legislation.*

DISMANTLING DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES

Criminal organizations are as old as crime itself, but are more extensive, sophisticated, and dangerous today than at any other point in history. The Department of Justice has a key role in tackling transnational criminal organizations like Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Mexican drug cartels as well as purely domestic criminal organizations like those built on the more traditional mafia crime model as part of its obligation to ensure the safety and security of the American people.

The department’s primary directive under the next Administration should be to return to an unapologetic focus on dismantling these criminal organizations and incarcerating their membership. Once this reprioritization occurs, the department’s political leadership should take concrete steps to use agency reach and resources to prevent these criminal organizations from operating and surviving. Assaulting the business model of these criminal organizations—which are massive, diversified enterprises with nationwide or international operations—is essential for success. The next Administration will therefore need to:

• Revitalize the DOJ’s use of the array of statutory tools that exist for

dealing with the threat of criminal organizations. The most potent ones are the simplest. For example, the department should:

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1. Rigorously prosecute as much interstate drug activity as possible, including simple possession of distributable quantities.*° Recent efforts to create the impression that drug possession crimes are not serious offenses has contributed to the explosion of criminal organization activities in the United States.

2. Aggressively deploy the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO),*” which Congress expressly created to empower the Department of Justice to treat patterns of intrastatelevel crimes, such as robbery, extortion, and murder, as federal criminal conduct for criminal organizations and networks. The next Administration can use existing tools while it works with Congress to develop new tools.

Secure the border,** which is the key entry point for many criminal organizations and their supplies, products, and employees. Mexico— which is arguably functioning as a failed state run by drug cartels—is

the main point of transit for illegal drugs produced in Central and South America, fentanyl precursors from the Chinese Communist Party-led People’s Republic of China,” weapons, human smuggling and trafficking, and other contraband. Mexican drug cartels, including the dominant Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), are the main drivers of fentanyl production and distribution in the United States. The southwestern land border is sufficiently porous that Mexican drug cartels have operational control of large sections of the border, which facilitates easy movement of product and personnel. These cartels are also violent and not afraid to demonstrate force on both sides of the border. Their conduct represents a clear and present danger to the United States and its citizens.

In addition to finalizing the southwestern land border wall, the next Administration should take a creative and aggressive approach to tackling these dangerous criminal organizations at the border. This could include use of active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist

in arrest operations along the border—something that has not yet been done. A new and forceful approach to interdiction will have a ripple effect

on the operations of these criminal organizations, which currently operate freely without concern for criminal prosecution, and will lay the necessary groundwork for initial prosecutions of these organizations and their leaders.

It is critical that the federal government staunch the flow of drugs by preventing the far-too-easy access to the United States that now exists.