Mike Lee floats allowing private parties to target drug cartels for profit

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has floated the idea of the U.S. green-lighting private parties to target drug cartels for profit.

The senator laid out the proposal in posts on X.

“Letters of marque and reprisal are government-issued commissions that authorize private citizens (privateers) to perform acts that would otherwise be considered piracy, like attacking enemy ships during wartime,” Lee explained. “Privateers are rewarded with a cut of the loot they ‘bring home.’”

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The lawmaker pointed out that the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” and suggested that this power could be leveraged against drug cartels.

“Congress could issue letters of marque and reprisal authorizing private security firms or specially trained civilians to intercept cartel operations, particularly those involving drug shipments or human trafficking across borders,” Lee wrote, adding, “Focus on disrupting supply lines, capturing high-value targets, or seizing assets like boats, vehicles, cash, gold, or equipment used in criminal activities.”

Lee suggested that this method of contending with cartels would lower costs to American taxpayers, since privateers would be paid a portion of what they capture and bring back to the U.S.

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“Dismissing the possible use of letters of marque to combat Mexican drug cartels—either on the basis of ‘international law’ or otherwise—overlooks the clear and present threat posed by those cartels to the U.S.,” he wrote. “This could prove to be an effective alternative to war.” 

Lee noted that in such a scenario, privateers would only profit from “non-contraband,” and that cartel drugs would be destroyed, not sold.

“One pitfall as a practical matter might be that a lot of the property belonging to these cartels isn’t … easy to monetize — because the products they sell are illegal,” he wrote. 

“That could make it difficult to incentivize and reward them, as ‘prize courts’ (historically the government’s tool used for selling the seized assets and assessing how much money each privateer is able to receive) obviously wouldn’t be able to sell drugs,” Lee indicated. “But these cartels have a lot of non-contraband assets, including many things (gold, cash, etc.) that could be seized by privateers, returned to the U.S., liquidated, and used to reward the seizures.”

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Rep. Chip Roy responded to Lee’s proposal by describing it in a tweet as “worthy of consideration.”

“This would work very fast,” Elon Musk said of the idea in a post.