On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin the process for designating cartels and other groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The designation can carry financial and legal ramifications for the group.
The executive order doesn't designate any group a Foreign Terrorist Organization. That process requires action from several federal agencies. Instead, Trump mandated the attorney general, the secretaries of Homeland Security and Treasury and the national intelligence director "to make a recommendation regarding the designation of any cartel or other organization" within 14 days.
"International cartels constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime," the order said. The order doesn't name specific cartels, but it highlights Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua and MS-13, a gang comprised primarily of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from El Salvador, as transnational organizations that threaten the U.S.
The legal designation is used to identify foreign groups that "engage in premeditated, politically motivated acts of terrorism against noncombatant targets," according to the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank that provides counsel on foreign affairs.
Some international relations and counterterrorism experts have questioned what tangible impact giving drug cartels the designation would have, adding that it could harm U.S. diplomatic relations with Mexico. Trump floated this idea as president in 2019, but he backed off of it at the request of Mexico's president.
Trump's executive order begins the process for designating cartels and other transnational groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, but doesn't on its own designate them. We rate this promise In the Works.