(Photo courtesy of NPR) “President Trump signing an executive order regarding cartels in January”

Nate Coady

Connector Staff

Following through on an Executive Order issued by President Donald Trump in January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Thursday February 20 that the State Department will be designating eight criminal organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). 

The primary motive behind the designation is to send a political message that the administration is taking action against criminal organizations according to Angélica Durán-Martínez, an Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Lowell. However, she says the designation does “not necessarily [reflect] more complex realities on the ground.” 

A formal terrorist label allows for a wider range of actions the U.S. can take in combating the gangs and criminal organizations named in the designation, like Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), who are in some capacity, present in the country. Once an FTO designation is in place “the range of people you can charge for being connected to terrorism is bigger… adding the label makes a lot more people potentially liable. And the U.S. can use things like financial sanctions, freezing assets, things like that, to a wider range of people,” says Durán-Martínez.

“Terrorism,” albeit a complicated term to define, is not typically associated with groups like Tren de Aragua and MS-13. They are street gangs, operating at a smaller scale in comparison to other cartels named in the designation like the Sinaloa Cartel or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), let alone terrorist organizations.

 “What those groups are,” Durán-Martínez says of the gangs, “it’s not what people have in mind, that those groups are controlling in any way or shape or contributing radically to levels of crime in the U.S., that is not true.” She goes on to say that dealing with these organizations can be done using normal law enforcement procedure. In other words, combating gang presence within the country is something that can be done without an FTO designation. 

Even with the designation, the approach of going after large criminal organizations and their leaders has proven to be unreliable. “For the past twelve years,” Says Durán-Martínez, “Mexico has been capturing criminal leaders, arresting them; and the drug trade hasn’t gone anywhere; it has gotten bigger; organizations have become more fragmented, and this latest round of captures is not going to change that.” If the goal of the administration is to stifle drug trafficking organizations and halt the flow of fentanyl across the border, designating its proponents as FTOs will not prove to be successful according to Durán-Martínez.

Similar to the durability of criminal organizations is the movement of migrants across the southern border, which could also be affected if the U.S. decides to increase its manpower. Durán-Martínez thinks that immigration inevitability will endure under a possible increase in military presence at the border, but be moved underground to avoid involvement with U.S. law enforcement. 

Another potential effect is the opportunity for corruption. “The more you militarize, you also create incentives for state agents to become corrupt, because they have more power,” she says. In which case, to help them cross the border, migrants may look to the same criminal organizations that warranted an increased military presence in the first place. Situations where that kind of relationship occurs are not unheard of even before the Trump Administration’s FTO designation of cartels and criminal organizations. 

“What I see more than anything is a situation of no radical change,” is ultimately what Durán-Martínez says about the designation because it “is not doing anything to tackle other parts that sustain the network, the addiction itself, or the financial networks, or even the flow of arms… the designation tackles one thing… which is maybe capturing and processing leaders and maybe giving them more sentences.” But like the country already knows from the years of drug interdiction: that won’t do anything. 

What the designation means for international relations with Mexico will be determined in the coming days. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated that whatever the next steps for the Trump administration are, they should not impede on the sovereignty of Mexico. However, given the administration’s willingness to take unprecedented actions so far, there is uncertainty as to what the Executive Branch will do in pursuit of cartels and crime organizations. Durán-Martínez says, “I won’t rule out anything with this administration at this point.”