President Donald Trump asked 18 Latin American and Caribbean nations to designate two dozen cartels and criminal groups as terrorist organizations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday, as the administration seeks broader regional cooperation against drug-trafficking groups.
Rubio said Trump made the request Tuesday during a meeting in New York with leaders and senior officials from the Shield of the Americas, a 19-nation coalition including the United States, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
"Obviously, some countries are in the process of doing it," Rubio told reporters Wednesday . "Some have already done it."
Fourteen countries had agreed to pursue terrorist designations at the administration's urging, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Because each country has its own laws, some governments may need legislative approval before formally making the designations.
The State Department subsequently confirmed that those 14 countries and the United States had agreed to coordinated measures against the groups, including "sanctions, designations and financial actions." The participating governments also called for consultations under the Rio Treaty, a 1947 regional defense pact.
The two dozen criminal organizations have already been designated foreign terrorist organizations by the United States. They include Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, the Venezuela-founded Tren de Aragua and other groups operating across Latin America and the Caribbean.
A U.S. terrorist designation allows Washington to impose financial restrictions and penalties for providing material support, but it does not by itself authorize military action. NYT reported that coordinated regional designations could nevertheless help the administration build a broader rationale for potential military operations against criminal groups.
The initiative follows an expansion of U.S. terrorist designations for Latin American criminal organizations since Trump returned to office, alongside military strikes against suspected drug-trafficking operations.
Some former officials and analysts have questioned treating organized crime as terrorism. Todd Robinson, a former State Department official under President Joe Biden, told The Times that governments had made greater progress against traffickers through law enforcement, financial investigations and prosecutions.
Rubio, however, has characterized the organizations differently. During a recent visit to Ecuador, he said: "These are not just criminal organizations. These are terrorist organizations."
