In a letter sent yesterday to NOAA Fisheries from all ten Senators in the five states bordering the Gulf of America, the federal agency was urged to use its authority – without further delay – to prevent fish caught through illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing from entering the U.S. market.
The letter, led by Senator Bill Cassidy, MD (R-LA), and joined by Senators John Kennedy (R-LA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Katie Boyd Britt (R-AL), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Ashley Moody (R-FL), explained that the volume of illegally harvested red snapper seized by the U.S. Coast Guard from Mexican lanchas fishing illegally in U.S. waters increased by 28 percent in 2025 compared to the year prior. The letter further emphasized that “the Coast Guard interdicts only one in every five detected foreign fishing vessels, leaving nearly 80 percent of illegal incursions unchallenged and free to enter domestic commerce through opaque supply chains.” As the Senators observed, the lanchas illegally fishing in U.S. waters in the Gulf of America are not operating on an isolated based “but as organized operations increasingly linked to the Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico’s most dangerous criminal organizations.”
These illegal operations are funded by unwitting Americans who purchase Mexican red snapper unaware of how it is harvested. The Senators’ letter noted that “[t]he continued ability to sell illegally harvested red snapper into the U.S. market is a powerful financing source for the Cartel and undermines both U.S. fisheries management and national security.” Accordingly, in order to effectively respond to these illegal acts, the federal government must no longer permit further importation of red snapper from Mexico until the lanchas’ incursions are stopped: “Conditioning market access on compliance through focused, risk-based measures would protect law-abiding U.S. fishermen, safeguard shared fish stocks, and remove a key economic incentive sustaining cartel-linked fishing activity while preserving lawful trade and minimizing impacts on compliant segments of the American seafood industry.”
The Southern Shrimp Alliance strongly supports the Senators’ request and also urges NOAA Fisheries to take action. IUU fishing by Mexican lanchas undermines the catch restrictions for red snapper imposed on American fishermen. Moreover, the health of the red snapper stock has been used as a consideration to justify restrictions on the overall effort of the Gulf commercial shrimp industry as a means for limiting bycatch. In consequence, depletion of the red snapper stock in U.S. waters not only takes these fish away from American fishermen but places greater pressure on commercial fisheries targeting other species to limit their activities.
Beyond the adverse impacts to American commercial fishermen, Mexican lanchas also kill protected marine species, including sea turtles and marine mammals. These activities significantly undermine the fishery management programs imposed on other U.S. commercial fishing industries and threaten further restrictions on the activities of American fishermen. In practical effect, U.S. commercial fishermen are required to minimize their interactions with protected species so that they can be harmed by foreign fishermen illegally working U.S. waters.
Despite expending an enormous amount of resources, federal government responses to the Mexican lanchas have done little to curb the practice and, at times, have unintentionally harmed American businesses while having no impact on IUU fishing. For example, effective February 7, 2022, NOAA Fisheries, using authority granted to the agency under the High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act (16 U.S.C. § 1826a), prohibited all Mexican fishing vessels operating in the Gulf of America from entering U.S. ports and denied them access to U.S. port services. NOAA Fisheries negatively certified Mexico for IUU fishing in both 2021 and 2023 “for its continued failure to combat unauthorized fishing activities by small hulled vessels (called lanchas) in U.S. waters, for which it was first identified in 2019.” While this step has stopped lawfully operating Mexican fishing vessels from using services at ports along the southern Texas coast such as the Port of Brownsville, the prohibition made no difference to the lancha-based fishermen illegally operating in U.S. waters, as these small vessels do not attempt to use U.S. ports.
Conversely, no effort has been undertaken to utilize authority to prohibit imports in response to IUU fishing, as set forth at 16 U.S.C. § 1826a(b)(3). Under this statutory provision, in response to negative certification determinations from NOAA Fisheries, the President “shall direct the Secretary of the Treasury to prohibit the importation into the United States of fish and fish products and sport fishing equipment (as that term is defined in section 4162 of title 26) from that nation.” Such a response is particularly appropriate where, as here, a significant portion of the illegally harvested fish is ultimately exported to the U.S. market.
“The U.S. shrimp industry is grateful to Senator Cassidy, as well as all of our Gulf state Senators for demanding that NOAA Fisheries use the authority given to it by Congress to meaningfully respond to the illegal fishing of Mexican lanchas in U.S. waters,” said Blake Price, the Deputy Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “From our experience with the Section 609 program, our industry had proven that access to the U.S. market can be used to meaningfully improve standards in foreign supply chains. NOAA Fisheries has full authority to implement a meaningful response to the cartel-linked lanchas. It is well past time to use it.”