The U.S. added the Juárez Cartel and Los Viagras to its foreign terrorist organization list on Thursday, bringing the number of designated Mexican criminal groups to eight.
Marco Rubio said both groups either committed terrorist acts or pose a serious risk to U.S. nationals, national security, foreign policy or the economy — a label Washington began applying to Latin American cartels in February 2025.
The Juárez Cartel controls trafficking routes through Ciudad Juárez across from El Paso, while Los Viagras operates in Michoacán, where its leader Nicolás Sierra Santana is already under a U.S. drug-trafficking indictment and carries a $5 million reward.
The move deepens pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum's government after U.S. indictments of 10 current and former Sinaloa officials and amid disputes over U.S. operations in Mexico.
Could the U.S. policy of designating cartels as terrorists inadvertently create more powerful and unified criminal super-groups?
When profit-driven cartels are labeled terrorists, what are the unintended consequences for global businesses and Mexican civilians?
How does treating cartels as terrorist ecosystems, not just criminal groups, change the strategy needed to defeat them?
Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations: The 2025–2026 US Policy Shift, Enforcement Surge, and Geopolitical Fallout
Overview
In 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14157, declaring Latin American cartels as threats to US security and calling for their designation as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). This led to the US formally labeling eight major cartels as FTOs, reshaping counter-narcotics enforcement in the Western Hemisphere. The new policy integrated counter-narcotics operations into broader national security objectives and marked a shift to a more direct and militarized US posture in Latin America. As a result, multinational corporations now face stricter compliance challenges, and the region’s security landscape has fundamentally changed.