Trump admin reveals list of cartels and gangs to be designated terrorist organizations

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 on Tuesday.

The 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.”

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The New York Times reported last week that the State Department has already informed several congressional committees of the organizations it plans to designate as terror groups.

This comes after President Donald 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. 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.

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A foreign terrorist designation 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.  

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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.

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At the time, Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, who in 2024 authored a report on how to dismantle TdA, explained to Fox News Digital 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.'”