WATCH: Lindsey Graham warns Mexican government, ‘We are going to start killing people’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) issued an ultimatum to the Mexican government on Thursday, calling on it to change its policies or the United States would be forced to take drastic measures.

This comes after four American citizens, who Graham notes were South Carolina residents, were kidnapped in Mexico. Two of the people were killed. The FBI believes that the Americans were targeted by mistake by a Mexican cartel.

“I want to let the Mexican government know that if you don’t change your policies, we are going to take things into our own hands,” the senator said on America Reports.

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“We are going to start killing people in Mexico who are killing Americans because they are terrorists,” he said. “We do it all over the world every night. We have all of the legal authority we need to go after these drug cartels if we change our laws.”

Graham said he is seeking two things. First, he wants to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations under U.S. law. “Then, I want to do the second thing, allow military force to be used,” he said.

According to him, this will allow the U.S. “to break the backs of these cartels that are killing 70,000 Americans a year.”

“We need an authorization to use military force to surgically strike the drug cartels that are terrorist organizations operating,” he added.

Addressing the Mexican government, he explained, “Your policies are not working for your own people. They are not working for the United States.”

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Of the cartels, he claimed, “They are the enemy of the United States. They declared war on the American people through the use of fentanyl and other terrorist tactics. I want to declare war on them.”