President Donald Trump is making good on his word to cut off the heads of dangerous drug cartels responsible for trafficking and drug distribution impacting the United States.
It was reported today that the Trump administration sent a list of over half a dozen drug cartels to Congress last week that it plans to designate as foreign terrorist organizations.
Fox News confirmed that list sent to Congress includes the international Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua – Spanish for “Train from Aragua” – that has ties to the socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and has been terrorizing U.S. cities in recent months.
Other groups included in the Trump administration’s list are the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha – also known as MS-13 – as well as several Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa, Jalisco, Zetas, the Gulf Cartels, Cartel Unidos and “La Nueva Familia Michoacana.”
It was reported last week by the New York Times that the State Department has already informed several congressional committees of the organizations it plans to designate as terror groups.
The news comes after Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to direct the State Department and other executive agencies to move to designate cartels and other criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
The order specifically mentioned Tren de Aragua – which is also known as “TdA” – as well MS-13 as groups needing to be designated as terror organizations.
The news is significant as it gave Secretary of State Marco Rubio 14 days to make policy recommendations – in consultation with the secretaries of the Treasury and Homeland Security as well as the U.S. attorney general and director of national intelligence – to make a recommendation regarding the designation of criminal groups to be designated as terrorist organizations.
The terrorist designation is important because it expands the government’s ability to crack down on criminal groups operating in the U.S., allowing all government agencies, including the Department of the Treasury, to target that group from every angle.
The order states that these groups “present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” and invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEP) to declare a national emergency to “deal with those threats.”
“It is the policy of the United States to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States and their ability to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States through their extraterritorial command-and-control structures, thereby protecting the American people and the territorial integrity of the United States,” reads the order.
Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, in 2024 authored a report on how to dismantle TdA.
He told Fox News that designating these groups as foreign terrorist organizations places them “at the highest level” of U.S. national security interest, meaning their funding and any organizations enabling them can be targeted as well.
“Trump just put all of them on notice,” said Humire.
“This said: ‘We know you’re here; we know you’re up to no good and we’re going to come after you.'”