Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
- Donald Trump plans to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations upon taking office.
- Critics warn this could harm U.S.-Mexico relations and escalate border violence.
- Trump aims to combat drug demand with campaigns against fentanyl's harmful effects.
PHOENIX — President-elect Donald Trump promised to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations "immediately" upon entering office on Jan. 20.
Trump vowed, during his first rally-style speech since winning the presidency, that his "first day back in the Oval Office" will produce "a historic slate of executive orders" to enhance border security, initiate "the largest deportation operation in American history" and ensure that foreign gangs operating in the United States are "dismantled, deported and destroyed."
"Every foreign gang member will be expelled, and I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. We're going to do it immediately. And we will unleash the full power of federal law enforcement, ICE (and) border patrol," Trump said during Turning Point USA's AmericaFest conference on Dec. 22.
Trump previously proposed labeling Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in November 2019 after members of La Linea, a Mexico-based drug trafficking organization, massacred three mothers and six children traveling near La Mora, a decades-old settlement in the state of Sonora founded by early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
At the time, Trump said all the statutory steps had been taken to declare Mexican cartels a terrorist threat. Ultimately, Trump did not move forward with the terrorist designation after the idea was met with resistance from then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who agreed to increase joint law enforcement efforts in response to the attack.
The U.S. has never designated a drug cartel as a terrorist organization before. Doing so would allow federal authorities to block the flow of cartel money through American banks and would facilitate criminal prosecution and military action against cartels and their allies.
Opponents say the designation would damage the country's relationship with the Mexican government, escalate violence along the southern border and threaten migrants who are forced to rely on cartels for their travel through Mexico. Waging war on the cartels does not address the fundamental problem of drug demand, critics point out.
But Trump is planning on initiatives to address this side of the equation as well. During the same speech, Trump announced his administration would invest in "very big advertising campaigns" to inform Americans about the side effects of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that was responsible for 74,700 of the 107,500 overdose deaths in 2023.
"They ruin your look. They ruin your face. They ruin your skin and ruin your teeth. If you want to have horrible teeth, take a lot of fentanyl. If you want to have skin that looks so terrible, take fentanyl," Trump said. "We're going to show what these drugs are doing to you. Nobody's done that before, and we're going to do it."
Why designate cartels as terrorist organizations?
Trump is renewing his commitment to designating cartels as terrorist organizations during a time of increasing migrant-related crime.
While there is a consensus among studies that migrants who entered the country illegally are significantly less likely to commit violent and drug crimes than native-born Americans, there has been a dramatic spike in crime committed by migrants who are in the country illegally since 2020.
In 2020, just over 200 "noncitizens" were convicted of assault, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. In 2023 that number had risen to over 1,200. In 2020, there were three noncitizens convicted with homicide or manslaughter. In 2023 and 2024, there were 29; in 2021 and 2022 there were 60. In 2020, fewer than 400 noncitizens were convicted of illegal drug possession or trafficking. In 2023, there were more than 2,000.
Drug trafficking in America is directly tied to cartel activity, according to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report from May 2024. The report found that the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels, the "most powerful and ruthless" in Mexico, have eliminated all competition for drug trafficking in the country and currently operate in all 50 states.
Amid surges in immigration that were likely incentivized by Biden administration policies, a growing chorus of Republican lawmakers, including Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, have called for more aggressive actions against Mexican cartels.
In 2023, Lee co-sponsored a bill — one of several introduced by GOP legislators in the U.S. House and Senate — that would formally designate nine Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, making it easier to prosecute and use military force against them and granting the Secretary of Treasury authority to freeze the cartels' assets.
During the same session, Republican Reps. Dan Crenshaw, of Texas, and Mike Waltz, of Florida, introduced a bill that authorizes the president to use military force "against those responsible for trafficking fentanyl." In November, Trump selected Waltz to be his national security adviser.
Another 'war on terror'?
Following Trump's remarks at AmericaFest, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she is willing to "collaborate" with the United States to address cartel crime but pushed back against the terrorist designation which could lead to U.S. military operations on Mexican soil.
"We will never subordinate ourselves," Sheinbaum said. "Mexico is a free, sovereign, independent country, and we do not accept interference."
Sheinbaum's response comes less than a month after Trump announced he will implement a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico — one of the United States' top trading partners — on his first day in office unless it puts a complete stop to the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs over the border.
EL PAÍS, a newspaper based in Spain, quoted a senior official at the Mexican Embassy as saying that a terrorist designation for cartels "would be a strategic error with unpredictable consequences for both countries." The source argued that it would be ineffective to treat organized crime like an ideologically based terrorist group.
Former special operations soldiers told Rolling Stone that the terrorist designation could allow units like SEAL Team Six and Delta Force to eliminate cartel leadership, a process similar to that used to take down terrorist groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
"Republicans will mobilize Military personnel and assets as necessary to crack down hard on the cartels that traffic drugs and people into our Country," according to the official Trump Republican Party Platform.
Trump's incoming border czar, former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan, said the president-elect is committed to erase cartels as a national security threat no matter what it takes.
During the Republican national convention in July, Homan claimed that Mexican cartels have "killed more Americans than every terrorist organization in the world combined" because of the deadly nature of the drugs they traffic.
"And that's why when President Trump gets back in office, he's going to designate you a terrorist organization, and he's going to wipe you off the face of the earth. You're done," Homan said.
