The Trump administration has designated 21 Latin American and Caribbean felony teams as “international terrorist organizations,” with the most recent an Ecuadorian group added to the checklist on Wednesday.
The announcement got here in the course of the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s go to to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru the place he’s targeted on the US technique to fight drug trafficking in Latin America.
The label was as soon as reserved for teams just like the Islamic State group or al-Qaida that use violence for political ends — not for money-focused crime rings. However Trump’s intention was to extend strain on the teams and anybody who the US sees as aiding them.
The technique rolled out in February 2025 and served as a pretext for the seize of Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro, and for dozens of assaults on alleged “narcoterrorist” boats, leading to greater than 200 deaths.
It additionally led Latin American nations resembling Guatemala and Argentina to take comparable actions in opposition to sure teams and states like Ecuador to launch joint operations on Ecuadorian soil.
Mexico, with eight teams on the checklist, has probably the most of any nation.
Its authorities is beneath excessive strain from the US to keep away from Trump unilateral actions, particularly for the reason that indictments of high-ranking officers in Sinaloa state.
However Trump’s method has additionally revealed contradictions.
Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced to 45 years for drug trafficking and accused in the course of the trial to guard the Sinaloa Cartel, was pardoned by Trump final yr and has returned to his nation.
Right here’s a take a look at the 21 Latin American and Caribbean felony teams labeled as international terrorist organizations:
MEXICO
1. The principle targets: Sinaloa and Jalisco New Technology cartels
The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Technology Cartel, named for the states which are their strongholds in northwestern Mexico, are multinational felony teams and the biggest fentanyl traffickers into the US.
The Sinaloa Cartel is Mexico’s oldest felony group courting again to the Nineteen Seventies. It’s a felony conglomerate that strikes all kinds of medicine throughout continents utilizing boats, planes, migrants and cross-border tunnels.
A former safety chief was convicted of serving to them. It controls the western portion of the US-Mexico border though the arrest of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada set off inside jockeying for energy and weakened the group.
The Jalisco New Technology Cartel, established within the early 2010s, is a hyperviolent group that has attacked Mexican authorities, utilizing explosive-dropping drones and improvised explosive units.
It tried a spectacular assassination of the then-Mexico Metropolis police chief — now Mexico’s safety secretary — within the coronary heart of the capital.
The DEA says the group now distributes tons of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in all 50 US states. Jalisco Cartel has remained highly effective following the killing of its chief Nemesio Oseguera, “El Mencho” in February and ongoing captures.
2. Management of the Texas border: Gulf Cartel, Northeast Cartel and Juarez Cartel
The Gulf Cartel and the Northeast Cartel function alongside the japanese finish shifting medicine, immigrants, weapons and cash in what’s the most direct path to the US from Central and South America.
Gulf Cartel’s former chief, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (now imprisoned in Mexico after serving a sentence within the US), recruited members of Mexico’s army within the late Nineteen Nineties to type a fearsome component often called the Zetas that ultimately cut up and have become their very own drug trafficking group.
The Northeast Cartel is a remnant of the Zetas and their base is Nuevo Laredo, the busiest industrial port on the US-Mexico border.
Juarez Cartel has managed for many years a key crossing level within the central a part of the Mexico-U. S. border: Ciudad Juárez, throughout from El Paso, Texas.
Each its founder, Amado Carrillo Fuentes and the brothers and sons who succeeded him, turned the trafficking of tons of medicine right into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.
Regardless of the arrests of a lot of its leaders, the cartel and its allied gangs maintained management of an enormous infrastructure for smuggling unlawful shipments into the US.
3. Native cartels in a key western state: La Familia, Carteles Unidos and Viagras
These native organized crime teams working within the west-central Mexican state of Michoacan produce artificial medicine and have consolidated their regional management of the territory by means of extortion and shifting names, loyalties and alliances.
La Familia Michoacana , now renamed “Nueva Familia Michoacana” is the oldest. The opposite two, former allies, emerged following the 2013–2014 armed rebellion led by farmers who succeeded in driving out lots of the outdated cartels, solely to see them changed by new ones.
Their extortion impacts all financial sectors, together with a key Mexican export to the US: avocados.
CENTRAL AMERICA
4. Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha
Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha, also referred to as MS-13, are each largely primarily based in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
They originated in Los Angeles as a avenue gangs created by Salvadoran immigrants. When a lot of their members have been deported from the US to El Salvador, the gangs expanded and gained energy throughout Central America, the place they proceed to terrorize communities.
In recent times, each teams has been dealt a robust blow by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has waged conflict on the nation’s gangs, imprisoning greater than 80,000 individuals for alleged gang ties. Final October, Guatemala additionally designed each gangs as terrorists and toughened legal guidelines in opposition to them.
COLOMBIA
5. Clan del Golfo
With an estimated 9,000 fighters, Clan del Golfo is one in all Colombia’s strongest armed teams. Additionally recognized by its Spanish acronym AGC, the group advanced from right-wing paramilitary squads that fought Marxist guerrillas in Colombia within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s.
In keeping with a report of the Human Rights Defender’s Workplace, AGC is current in a few third of Colombia’s 1,103 municipalities, the place it extorts native companies.
Clan del Golfo was concerned in peace talks with Colombia’s authorities final yr, however these talks dissolved with the election of Abelardo de la Espriella as president.
VENEZUELA
6.Tren de Aragua
This organized crime group emerged from a jail in central Venezuela greater than a decade in the past. In recent times, it has unfold from Chile to the US, capitalizing on the exodus of some 8 million Venezuelans escaping their nation’s political and financial crises.
Whereas its origins are in drug trafficking, its major companies are migrant smuggling, human trafficking, sexual exploitation and compelled labor. It’s recognized for excessive violence — decapitations and burying victims alive.
7. Cartel de los Soles
The entity that the US authorities alleges was led by Maduro, isn’t a cartel per se however was designated as such much less that six weeks earlier than Maduro was captured in January.
Venezuelans started utilizing the time period Cartel de los Soles within the Nineteen Nineties to consult with high-ranking army officers who had grown wealthy from drug-running.
As corruption expanded beneath the late President Hugo Chávez after which beneath Maduro, its use loosely expanded to police and authorities officers in addition to actions like unlawful mining and gasoline trafficking.
The “suns” within the title consult with the epaulettes affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking army officers.
The umbrella time period was elevated to a Maduro-led drug-trafficking group in 2020 when the US introduced the indictment of Venezuela’s chief.
ECUADOR
8. Los Lobos, Los Choneros, The Chone Killers and Los Tiguerones
Los Lobos, Los Choneros, The Chone Killers and Los Tiguerones are gangs blamed for a lot of the violence that started in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
All are concerned in contract killings, extortion operations and the motion and sale of medicine.
Los Tiguerones is an armed group that was shaped in Guayaquil in 2019 because the armed wing of Los Choneros, the felony group that serves because the father or mother group for many of Ecuador’s felony gangs.
Authorities have blamed them for the elevated violence within the nation as they combat over drug-trafficking routes to the Pacific and management of territory, together with inside prisons, the place a whole bunch of inmates have been killed since 2021.
All of them are amongst 22 felony gangs designated as “terrorists” by Ecuador in 2024.
BRAZIL
9. Commando Vermelho and Primeiro Comando da Capital
Commando Vermelho and Primeiro Comando da Capital are two of probably the most violent felony organizations in Brazil. They work with some 50 smaller gangs all around the nation.
Collectively, they command 1000’s of members and have orchestrated brutal assaults in opposition to Brazilian cops, public officers, and civilians. Their affect and illicit networks lengthen far past Brazil’s borders.
HAITI
10. Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif gangs
The 2 Haitian teams are primarily linked to arms trafficking, kidnapping, murdering, extortion and, to a lesser extent, to drug trafficking.
The Viv Ansanm coalition is finest recognized for launching a collection of assaults beginning in February 2024 that shuttered Haiti’s major worldwide airport, freed a whole bunch of inmates from the nation’s two largest prisons and ultimately compelled former Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign.
It controls not less than 85% of the capital, which forces nonprofits and different teams to barter with gangs to allow them to achieve entry to communities to offer meals, water and different crucial provides.
In October, the gang was blamed for killing greater than 70 individuals in Pont-Sondé.
