The Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State says it will des­ig­nate Car­tel de los Soles as a For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tion, with the des­ig­na­tion tak­ing ef­fect on 24 No­vem­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the group is based in Venezuela and is head­ed by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and oth­er high-rank­ing fig­ures “of the il­le­git­i­mate Maduro regime” who, it says, have cor­rupt­ed the coun­try’s mil­i­tary, in­tel­li­gence, leg­is­la­ture, and ju­di­cia­ry.

The De­part­ment said nei­ther Maduro nor his as­so­ciates rep­re­sent Venezuela’s le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment. It added that Car­tel de los Soles, work­ing along­side oth­er des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Car­tel, is re­spon­si­ble for ter­ror­ist vi­o­lence across the re­gion and for traf­fick­ing drugs in­to the Unit­ed States and Eu­rope.

The state­ment added that the Unit­ed States will con­tin­ue us­ing all avail­able tools to pro­tect its na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests and cut off fund­ing and re­sources to what it de­scribes as nar­co-ter­ror­ist groups.

The De­part­ment said the ac­tion is be­ing tak­en un­der sec­tion 219 of the Im­mi­gra­tion and Na­tion­al­i­ty Act, and that For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tion des­ig­na­tions take ef­fect once pub­lished in the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter. It not­ed that Car­tel de los Soles had al­ready been des­ig­nat­ed by the De­part­ment of the Trea­sury un­der Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 13224.