(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday formally designated several transnational criminal organizations as a foreign terrorist organizations.
On his second day in office, Trump issued an executive order designating Mexican cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, Salvadoran La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), as FTOs and specially designated global terrorists (SDGTs) under the U.S. Constitution, Immigration and Nationality Act and International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
“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,” Trump’s order states. “They functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States. In certain portions of Mexico, they function as quasi-governmental entities, controlling nearly all aspects of society.”
TdA and MS13 gang members also pose similar threats, engaging in “campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and similarly threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere,” presenting “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
The order directed the Secretary of State, Treasury Secretary, Homeland Security Secretary and National Intelligence Director to take appropriate actions to implement his order.
On Feb. 6, Secretary of State Marco Rubio officially made the FTO designation, which went into effect on Feb. 20 when it was published in the Federal Register.
The notice states that Rubio reviewed relevant records and consulted with the Attorney General and Treasury Secretary. After doing so, he said, “I have concluded that there is a sufficient factual basis to find that the relevant circumstances described in section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act” to make the FTO designation.
Rubio designated the following transnational criminal organizations as FTOs:
Tren de Aragua (also known as Aragua Train);Mara Salvatrucha (also known as MS-13);Cartel de Sinaloa (also known as Sinaloa Cartel, Mexican Federation, Guadalajara Cartel);Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (also known as New Generation Cartel of Jalisco, CJNG, Jalisco New Generation Cartel);Carteles Unidos (also known as United Cartels, Tepalcatepec Cartel, Cartel de Tepalcatepec, The Grandfather Cartel, Cartel del Abuelo, Cartel de Los Reyes);Cartel del Noreste (also known as CDN, Northeast Cartel, Los Zetas);Cartel del Golfo (also known as CDG, Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cardenas-Guillen Organization); andLa Nueva Familia Michoacana (also known as LNFM).
Trump and Rubio took action in less than a month of being in office after 21 state attorneys general and multiple governors and federal and state lawmakers called on the Biden administration to make the FTO designation for years, which it refused to do so.
The Center Square first reported on transnational criminal organizations using asymmetrical and nontraditional warfare targeting Americans as a reason some said Texas should declare an invasion in 2022. Neither the Texas governor nor legislature formally declared an invasion although the governor designated Mexican cartels and TdA as FTOs. Arizona’s former attorney general was the first and only attorney general to issue a formal opinion on invasion, arguing states have a constitutional right to self-defense, The Center Square reported.
Former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, now Homeland Security Secretary, was the only governor in modern history to declare an invasion before a state legislature; 55 Texas counties were the first and only to declare an invasion in U.S. history, The Center Square exclusively reported.
On Trump’s first day in office, he declared an invasion at the southern border, the first president in modern history to do so. Trump’s invasion declaration cites transnational criminal organizations waging war against Americans creating a national security threat. Texas county invasion resolutions pointed to Mexican cartels acting as paramilitary organizations facilitating migrant warfare, The Center Square exclusively reported.
“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” to protect Americans and the territorial integrity of the U.S., Trump’s FTO order states.