body of Zetas drug cartel founder Heriberto L
body of Zetas drug cartel founder Heriberto LReuters

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) is warning that the federal government is ignoring a growing Hizbullah presence in Mexico, with the Lebanese terror group increasingly joining forces with drug cartels, Fox News reported.

There are reportedly hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners living in Mexico, many of whom may be radicals using routes established by drug networks to sneak into the United States.

"I don't have a lot of faith in the Department of Homeland Security," said Myrick. "They should be looking at these groups in Mexico much more closely."

The ties linking Mexico to Islamic terrorism were highlighted earlier this year when an alleged Iranian operative plotted to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington using a hired gun on loan from a Mexican drug cartel.

Mansour J. Arbabsia, a used-car salesman from Texas, had been accused of conspiring to hire assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million to kill the ambassador.

At the time the charges were announced, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the plot had been “directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Quds Force,” part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

"A little more than a year after his arrest, Mansour Arbabsiar has admitted to his role in a deadly plot approved by members of the Iranian military to assassinate a sitting foreign ambassador on U.S. soil,” Holder said in a press release.

Speculation of these groups operating in Mexico eventually became more tangible in the fall of 2010, when the Tucson Police Department published an International Terrorism Situational Awareness for Hizbullah in Mexico citing the arrest of Jameel Nasar in Tijuana in July 2010, who attempted to establish a Hizbullah network in Mexico and South America, according to Fox.

Myrick wrote a letter to Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, requesting that the department create a task force solely to watch Islamic terrorist groups in Mexico. Napolitano said there was no need, saying current intelligence resources were adequate.

“Given the evidence available, it only makes sense that DHS should, at the very least, investigate the presence of Hizbullah along our Southern border, regardless of who is in office,” Myrick said.