It’s perhaps the most despicable and malevolent form of animal cruelty in our nation. And that’s saying something.

People Die at Animal Fighting Derbies, Too

As I said, it turns out that non-human animals are not the only victims.

Earlier this year, at a cockfight in Mexico, six people were killed and 14 wounded when cartel-on-cartel violence broke out at the spectacle of cruelty. One of the dead was a 16-year-old boy from Washington State, killed in a hail of automatic weapons fire. His father was shot and injured.

You might ask, what are Americans doing at a cockfight in Mexico?

The reality is, Americans are the major suppliers of fighting animals to the cartel-controlled cockfighting pits throughout Mexico. This is an illicit trade every bit as ugly and violent as the drug trade, and these two forms of trafficking are bound together.

U.S.-based cockfighters breed fighting birds by the hundreds of thousands, and the cartels run through the animals in orgies of animal violence at cockfighting pits with stadium seating. They enjoy the bloodletting and the gambling, deadening their hearts even more to the suffering of others.

Prior to that latest mass shooting, there were 20 people killed in a separate massacre at a cockfight, and an American from Chicago was one of the victims.

And shootings occur on our side of the border as well. A referee shot at a cockfight in Miami. A spectator shot at a cockfight in Dallas. A mass shooting at a cockfight outside of Honolulu, with two dead and three wounded.

And dogfighting may be even worse.

In Mississippi, just two months ago, two men were shot and killed execution style.

We have multiple problems at the southern border, and one of those problems is the trafficking of fighting animals back and forth across it. This trafficking comes with cruelty, chaos, and crime, and it spills over into our communities.

I am shouting from the rooftops to lawmakers about the importance of passing the FIGHT Act. All of this cruelty and mayhem must end! This crime wave must be stopped.

The people conducting these crimes are a menace to our society. But while we are making unmistakable progress, there’s so much more to be done. Animal fighting won’t stop unless we get off of the sidelines and get involved in reporting the crimes, passing the FIGHT Act, and creating a culture of zero tolerance for these staged spectacles.

It's critical that we finish off animal fighting.

Because of our pushing them to act, federal and state authorities have made a range of arrests, including that of a senior official who worked at the Pentagon and ran an alleged dogfighting operation for more than 20 years! But these enforcement actions must increase manifold until the animal fighters get the message that continuing with their lawlessness will come with lasting and severe consequences.

Indeed, our Animal Fighting Is the Pits campaign is designed to eradicate staged fights involving dogs, or roosters with knives strapped to their legs.

We’ve long known that good laws are not enough. We need more enforcement of the law. We have a rewards program that offers cash to tipsters who alert us or law enforcement to these intentional crimes against animals. They can email us here.

There Are Major Gaps in Enforcement; Organized Criminals Continue to Operate

There are vast stretches of the United States without any meaningful enforcement and where the animal fighters operate with impunity. To our great dismay, for instance, the federal government has conducted no enforcement actions against animal fighting in Oklahoma, Guam, or Puerto Rico, even though we know where the animal fighters operate. In fact, at the end of 2023, we called out Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt for issuing a video tribute to the cockfighters in the Sooner State.

It's spotty enforcement of anti-animal-fighting laws that we’ve identified as a core problem. And that’s also why we are working to pass the FIGHT Act to give law enforcement more tools to bring down the dogfighters and cockfighters. We are so grateful to Senators Cory Booker, D-N.J., and John Kennedy, R-La., and Representatives Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., for leading this fight in Congress.

There are a number of provisions in the FIGHT Act, but one of the most important is to create a private right of action against animal fighters. If the measure passes, citizens can sue dogfighters and cockfighters in civil court if law enforcement doesn’t act on credible information about illegal fighting activities.

The FIGHT Act also bans gambling on on-line dogfights and cockfights, which is a $12-billion-plus enterprise in the Philippines alone. And it allows for the forfeiture of property and other assets used in the commission of an animal-fighting crime. That kind of penalty—losing a house or a truck—will be felt by any animal fighter.

It was a major moment when we passed a law in Congress in 2018 to ban animal fighting everywhere in the United States. But now we are locked onto the task of enforcement and shutting down the pits, the gamecock farms, the pit bull yards, and all of the other features of the organized crimes of dogfighting and cockfighting.

I hope you’ll write your federal lawmakers in support of the FIGHT Act.

Contact your federal lawmakers and urge them to cosponsor the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act!

And I also hope you’ll donate today to support our Animal Fighting Is the Pits campaign. If we cannot stop these forms of despicable and illegal cruelty, how can we address other structural problems such as factory farming, animal testing, the fur trade, and others?

For the animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Center for a Humane Economy