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Friday, February 28, 2025

Trump seeks to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations

by

37 days ago
20250121

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der Mon­day say­ing the Unit­ed States would des­ig­nate drug car­tels as for­eign ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tions in a move that could push a mil­i­ta­rized agen­da for the bor­der and Latin Amer­i­ca.

The or­der high­light­ed Mex­i­can drug car­tels and oth­er Latin Amer­i­can crim­i­nal groups like Venezuela gang Tren de Aragua and Sal­vado­ran gang Mara Sal­va­trucha (MS-13), which it said “threat­en the safe­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, the se­cu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States, and the sta­bil­i­ty of the in­ter­na­tion­al or­der in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.”

The or­der did not list the groups by name, but said Cab­i­net sec­re­taries would rec­om­mend groups for des­ig­na­tion as ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tions in the next 14 days. It was among a slew of or­ders Trump signed Mon­day to kick off his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The Car­tels have en­gaged in a cam­paign of vi­o­lence and ter­ror through­out the West­ern Hemi­sphere that has not on­ly desta­bi­lized coun­tries with sig­nif­i­cant im­por­tance for our na­tion­al in­ter­ests but al­so flood­ed the Unit­ed States with dead­ly drugs, vi­o­lent crim­i­nals, and vi­cious gangs,” the or­der read.

It was un­clear what the im­pact could be for fight­ing the car­tels, but there was con­cern it could be an­oth­er way to make it more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple from the coun­tries where those groups op­er­ate to ac­cess the U.S.

Re­lat­ed Sto­ries

In came in ad­di­tion to mea­sures in­clud­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of an emer­gency on the U.S. south­ern bor­der, a promise to slap 25% tar­iffs on Mex­i­co and Cana­da on Feb. 1 and end­ing the use of the CBP One app, which al­lowed mi­grants to ap­ply for asy­lum ap­point­ments be­fore reach­ing the bor­der.

Trump has al­so promised to car­ry out mass de­por­ta­tions and threat­ened mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion in Mex­i­co to fight car­tels, some­thing sharply re­ject­ed by Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent Clau­dia Shein­baum.

Many have voiced con­cern the ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tion could pro­vide the U.S. jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to take mil­i­tary ac­tion against car­tels.

Van­da Fel­bab-Brown, an or­ga­nized crime ex­pert for the Brook­ings In­sti­tu­tion, said the or­der could have “huge im­pli­ca­tions from trade to mi­grants.”

As car­tels have gained a firm grip on con­trol of the lu­cra­tive mi­grant smug­gling trade in re­cent years, it’s vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for mi­grants and asy­lum seek­ers to pass through Mex­i­co and oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries with­out pay­ing some sort of fee to car­tels.

The mo­ment they do, she said, it could dis­qual­i­fy them from seek­ing asy­lum.

“Trump can es­sen­tial­ly pre­vent the vast ma­jor­i­ty of un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants try­ing to cross the U.S. bor­der from get­ting asy­lum,” she said.

Mike Vig­il, a for­mer head of the U.S. Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s for­eign op­er­a­tions, said he ex­pect­ed any ter­ror­ism des­ig­na­tion to have very lit­tle im­pact on day-to-day op­er­a­tions against car­tels be­cause many of the same an­ti-ter­ror­ism pow­ers Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties would be grant­ed, they al­ready em­ploy in counter-nar­cotics ef­forts.

“It’s al­ready been done. This is noth­ing new,” Vig­il said. “It’s all po­lit­i­cal the­ater and toss­ing a piece of stale sala­mi to his base.”

He said lo­gis­ti­cal­ly the or­der would like­ly al­low the U.S. to seize as­sets of groups in the U.S., sanc­tion U.S. cit­i­zens that do busi­ness with ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tions and block mem­bers of those groups from en­ter­ing the U.S.

“It’s not go­ing to al­low the U.S. to send troops in­to Mex­i­co like so many peo­ple think sim­ply be­cause peo­ple for­get that Mex­i­co is a sov­er­eign coun­try and it would be an act of war,” he said.

The move comes as car­tel vi­o­lence has in­ten­si­fied in north­ern Mex­i­can states af­ter the kid­nap­ping and de­ten­tion of king­pin Is­mael “El Mayo” Zam­ba­da sparked an all-out war be­tween ri­val fac­tions of the Sinaloa car­tel. Gun­men con­tin­ue to leave mu­ti­lat­ed bod­ies scat­tered across the state and kid­nap peo­ple even from hos­pi­tals.

It’s part of a larg­er shift­ing dy­nam­ic in car­tel war­fare in the Latin Amer­i­can na­tion. Years ago, a hand­ful of crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions head­ed by a few key ca­pos, con­trolled large parts of Mex­i­co. Now, many more fac­tions have vi­o­lent­ly fought for pow­er, as they’ve be­come more ag­ile and hard­er to pin down.

They’ve used more so­phis­ti­cat­ed tools like bomb-drop­ping drones, im­pro­vised ex­plo­sive de­vices and rigged ar­mored ve­hi­cles, and have ex­pand­ed in­to mi­grant traf­fick­ing and the av­o­ca­do trade. Mean­while, thou­sands of Mex­i­can cit­i­zens have got­ten caught in the cross­fire, hav­ing been slain or gone miss­ing.

Some rel­a­tives of car­tel vic­tims in vi­o­lence-torn ar­eas of Mex­i­co hoped that des­ig­nat­ing the car­tels as ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tions could help their quest for jus­tice.

Adrián LeBarón, whose daugh­ter was killed in a 2019 mas­sacre in north­ern Mex­i­co, said he hoped it could raise vis­i­bil­i­ty for vic­tims of vi­o­lence in Mex­i­co, one of the most vi­o­lent coun­tries in the world that is not ac­tive­ly at war.

LeBarón, who has called the mas­sacre a ter­ror­ist at­tack, said the des­ig­na­tion could pres­sure au­thor­i­ties to bring jus­tice to vic­tims of vi­o­lence.

“An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to ter­ror­ism is jus­tice not on­ly for us, but al­so for every town and cor­ner of the coun­try where a fam­i­ly has been de­stroyed and ter­ror is sown in its wake,” he wrote on a post on the so­cial me­dia plat­form X.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porter María Verza con­tributed to this re­port from Mex­i­co City.

By MEGAN JANET­SKY

MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)


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