US Designates Six Latin American Drug Cartels as Terror Groups

The U.S. State Department has officially designated eight Latin American organized crime groups as foreign terrorist organizations, according to a notice issued Thursday. The move follows an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office, directing officials to evaluate whether the cartels should receive the designation.  

Under Trump’s order, the State Department classified the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the Los Angeles-founded Salvadoran gang MS-13, and six Mexican cartels—Sinaloa, Jalisco Nueva Generación, Carteles Unidos, Noreste, Golfo, and La Nueva Familia Michoacana—as terrorist organizations. 

Trump argued the cartels posed a national security threat “beyond that of traditional organized crime,” citing their “campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere” that has destabilized countries and flooded the U.S. with “deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”  

The designation was based on the groups' involvement in or risk of committing “acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals, or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the U.S.,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in the notice. However, the State Department did not specify what specific acts of terrorism the groups had committed. 

Rubio described the designation as an “economic tool” designed to cut off the cartels’ finances by prohibiting commercial relationships with them. “All of these gangs have to operate by touching the banking system, by being able to buy, and in many cases, by having business partnerships,” he said. Naming them as terror groups is important because “it gives us a valuable tool to cut off any partnerships they may have anywhere in the world.”  

Responding to the decision, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned that the move “cannot be an opportunity for the U.S. to invade” the country’s sovereignty. “With Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination—never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion,” she said.

Sheinbaum also announced plans to propose a constitutional amendment to crack down on foreign gun manufacturers and traffickers, citing an estimated 200,000 American-made firearms smuggled into Mexico annually.  

Earlier this month, she said Mexico would escalate its ongoing lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers to accuse them of complicity with terror groups if the designation were made official.

Mexico's lawsuit, filed in 2021, seeks $10 billion in damages from U.S.-based firearms manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson, Glock, Beretta, Barrett, Sturm and Ruger for facilitating arms flow to drug cartels and fueling gun violence across Mexico.