USA: On Thursday, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing Antony Blinken of the Department of State and Alejandro Mayorkas of Homeland Security to send active-duty reserve troops to the US-Mexico border as needed to combat the illicit drug trade.

"The authorities that have been invoked will ensure the Department of Defence can properly sustain its support of the Department of Homeland Security concerning international drug trafficking along the Southwest Border," Biden wrote in a message to Congress that was attached to the order.

The action is in response to the White House declaring a national emergency with regard to international drug trafficking in December 2021. The president imposed sanctions on senior cartel figures and blamed "drug cartels, transnational criminal organisations, and their facilitators" for bringing "illicit drugs and precursor chemicals" and "drug-related violence" into American communities.

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Former president Donald Trump is among the growing number of Republican politicians who have called for a military solution to the cartel issue. Last month, a group of 20 Republican members of Congress introduced a bill that would designate the Gulf Cartel, Cartel de Noreste, Cartel de Sinaloa, and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion as "foreign terrorist organisations," mirroring a Senate measure that would designate nine such organisations as terrorists and create a task force tasked with dismantling them. The Biden administration had previously been petitioned to designate cartels as terrorist organisations by the solicitors general of 21 US states.

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The fentanyl crisis, which kills tens of thousands of Americans annually, is blamed on social weaknesses in Canada and Chinese fentanyl being imported into North America, according to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopes Obrador. He criticised the US Drug Enforcement Agency for infiltrating the Sinaloa cartel earlier this month and warned that such actions put the lives of Americans and Mexicans in danger.

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The State Department also unveiled a new immigration policy on Thursday in an effort to make up for the repeal of Section 42, a public health directive issued under Trump that permitted Customs and Border Patrol to turn away many migrants who crossed the US-Mexico border. Customs and Border Protection already dealt with a record 2.76 million illegal crossings last year.