Trump Directs State Department to Recommend Cartels for Terrorism Designation
The order also directs the attorney general and secretary of homeland security to “make operational preparations” to implement any decision the president may make “to invoke the Alien Enemies Act.”
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
On Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”
Instead of implementing any designations itself, the order directs the secretary of state, in consultation with other relevant cabinet officials, to issue a recommendation within 14 days as to whether “certain international cartels…and other organizations” should be designated under one (or both) of two different existing terrorist designation regimes: as either a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) or a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The order does not specify what organizations qualify as “international cartels…and other organizations,” but does identify Tren de Aragua and La Mara Salvatrucha as examples of the latter.
Separately, the order also directs the attorney general and secretary of homeland security, in consultation with the secretary of state, to “make operational preparations” to implement any decision the president may make in the future “to invoke the Alien Enemies Act” to “expedite the removal of those who may be designated under this order.”
The text of the executive order is available here as well as below.
