On the day of his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
“The Cartels,” said President Trump, “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.”
The Cartels 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.
The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere. Their activities, proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States pose an unacceptable national security risk to the United States, said President Trump.
“And by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities.”
Gangs such as Tren de Aragua and La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, continue to pose threats to the United States, noted President Trump. “Their 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.”
President Trump vowed “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, thereby protecting the American people and the territorial integrity of the United States.”
“As commander in chief,” said President Trump, “I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do.”