The Trump administration is designating eight Latin American cartels, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and El Salvador’s MS-13 gangs, as foreign terrorist organizations in an effort to combat drug trafficking and migrant smuggling.
The move is in line with President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order that authorized the FTO label for international cartels. Tren de Aragua and MS-13 were specifically cited in the executive order. The label also applies to six cartels based in Mexico: Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, Gulf, Northeast, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, and United.
The designation was announced Wednesday and will be published in the Federal Register on Thursday.
Usually the State Department’s FTO designations are reserved for groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS instead of money-driven cartels.
When he returned to office last month, Trump declared a national emergency authorizing the military to help secure the southern border. American troops could also be used to target drug cartels across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has threatened to use military action if Mexican cartels attack American troops along the southern border.
“I think the cartels would be foolish to take on the military, but we know they’ve taken on the Mexican military before, but now we have the United States military,” Homan told ABC News earlier this month.
“Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely, because the cartels are making record amounts of money,” Homan said. “We’re taking money out of their pocket.”
Mexican drug cartels have been launching suicide drones equipped with explosives toward U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and military personnel at the border, according to multiple news outlets.
The CIA has already been gathering intelligence on these groups via covert drone missions over Mexico, CNN reported this week. CIA Director John Ratcliffe is committed to tackling drug trafficking, said a spokesperson, who declined to comment on the drone missions.
Trump is moving quickly to crack down on transnational crime organizations, compared to his first term. While he wanted to designate Mexican drug cartels as FTOs in 2019, Trump halted the plan at the time. Trump’s desire to designate the drug cartels as FTOs at that time came in response to the deaths of nine members of an American Mormon family, including six children, who were killed by cartel violence in Mexico. Since then, he has upped his rhetoric against such violence.
On Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum admitted she doesn’t accept the present U.S. designation if it means the cartels are targeted by U.S. military operations in Mexico.
“If they make this decree to investigate even more in the United States the money laundering and the criminal groups that operate in the United States, that carry out those drug sales, it’s very good,” Sheinbaum said. “What we do not accept is the violation of our sovereignty.”