Years Ago JW White Paper Verified Mexican Cartels are Foreign Terrorist Organizations

More than five years after Judicial Watch published a White Paper providing comprehensive documentation that Mexican drug cartels undoubtedly meet U.S. government requirements to be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) the Trump administration is finally making it happen. It is important to note however, that during his first term the president announced he would designate cartels as FTOs but days later did an about-face to appease then Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador. Trump claimed that the U.S. and Mexico would instead step up their joint efforts to “deal decisively” with the “vicious” cartels, which never happened.

Reneging on the FTO designation in late 2019 could not have come at a worse time because Mexico’s former top law enforcement official, a presidential cabinet member who oversaw the country’s federal police, had just been charged in the United States with multiple counts of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and one count of making false statements. The disgraced Mexican Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna, took millions of dollars in bribes to protect one of the country’s most notorious drug cartels, according to U.S. federal prosecutors. The Trump administration’s assertion that it would combat the sophisticated and violent criminal enterprises that have practically taken over Mexico by joining forces with its famously corrupt government—rather than use a tool like classifying cartels FTOs—seemed preposterous.

Thankfully, the president kicked off his second term by issuing a long overdue executive order designating cartels as FTOs as well as global terrorists. International cartels constitute a national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime, according to the order which states that cartels infiltrate into foreign governments across the western hemisphere and have complex, adaptive systems characteristic of entities that engage in insurgency and asymmetric warfare. “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, adding that cartels 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,” the executive order says. “The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere. Their activities, proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States pose an unacceptable national security risk to the United States.” The document also mentions other transnational organizations such as Venezuela’s deadly Tren de Aragua gang and the famously violent Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), renowned for drug distribution, murder, rape, robbery, home invasions, kidnappings, vandalism, and other brutal crimes. “Their 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,” the executive order reads.

Finally designating Mexico’s major cartels—which include Los Zetas, Juárez, La Familia Michoacána and Sinaloa—as FTOs will enhance the federal government’s ability to combat them. An official FTO classification enables the prosecution of those who provide them with material support, facilitates the denial of entry and deportation of TCO members and affiliates and eliminates the organizations’ access to the U.S. financial system. “FTO designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective means of curtailing support for terrorist activities and pressuring groups to get out of the terrorism business,” according to the State Department. For years Mexican cartels have hijacked and sabotaged buses, commercial trucks and trains, activity constituting terrorist activity under U.S. law. They have headquarters throughout the United States and are one of the country’s greatest criminal, national security, and public health threats.

The U.S. government has long assessed that Mexican drug cartels are the greatest criminal threat to the country and that they are smuggling mass quantities of deadly illicit fentanyl into communities throughout the nation. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says they maintain drug distribution cells in cities across the U.S. that report to leaders in Mexico and dominate the nation’s drug market. The FTO designation was long overdue.