President Donald Trump is directing federal agencies to target Mexican cartels and other foreign groups that are a threat to American citizens and national security.
Trump’s executive order designates Mexican cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, Salvadoran La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and specially designated global terrorists (SDGTs) under the U.S. Constitution, Immigration and Nationality Act and International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
“International cartels constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime, with activities encompassing convergence between themselves and a range of extra-hemispheric actors, from designated foreign-terror organizations to antagonistic foreign governments; complex adaptive systems, characteristic of entities engaged in insurgency and asymmetric warfare; an infiltration into foreign governments across the Western Hemisphere,” the order states.
“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.”
In response, Trump said, “I hereby declare a national emergency, under IEEPA, 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” to protect Americans and the territorial integrity of the U.S.
He directed the secretary of State, secretary of the Treasury, attorney general, secretary of Homeland Security, and director of National Intelligence to take all appropriate action to implement his order.
He also instructed them to “make operational preparations regarding the implementation of any decision I make to invoke the Alien Enemies Act … in relation to the existence of any qualifying invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States by a qualifying actor, and to prepare such facilities as necessary to expedite the removal of those who may be designated under this order.”
Trump’s order comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and 21 Republican attorneys general for years called on the Biden administration to do so.
In September 2022, Abbott designated Mexican cartels as FTOs, issuing an executive order designating the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as foreign terrorist organizations,” The Center Square reported. He twice asked former President Joe Biden to do so and received no response.
Roughly one year ago, a coalition of 21 Republican attorneys general led by Virginia AG Jason Miyares also made the same request, argued an FTO designation was imperative because cartels are “assassinating rivals and government officials, ambushing, and killing Americans at the border, and engaging in an armed insurgency against the Mexican government,” The Center Square reported. “This dangerous terrorist activity occurring at our border will not abate unless we escalate our response.”
They also received no response – until Jan. 20, 2025.
The Center Square first reported on cartels using asymmetrical and nontraditional warfare targeting Americans as a reason for Texas to declare an invasion in 2022. No official state declaration was issued and the Texas AG’s office refused to issue a legal opinion on the matter despite numerous requests to do so. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was the only one to declare an invasion before a state legislature and 55 Texas counties declared an invasion, 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.
