“The new Trump administration is “designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations” as part of a crackdown on drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexican border, President Donald Trump said during his inauguration speech on Monday.
Trump also promised “to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gang criminal networks” through the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the government to round up foreigners who are citizens of a country that Congress has declared war on or that is engaged in an “invasion or predatory incursion.””
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“”Because the cartels are so closely intertwined with legitimate businesses (in mafioso-like protection rackets), many people are forced to pay them off or be killed. Under US law, that could count as material support to terrorism,” writes attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
Ironically, immigration hawks worry that a terrorist designation might make it easier for Mexicans to come to the United States as refugees, since they can claim they are fleeing terrorism.”
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“Even though terrorism designations are not legally a declaration of war, they might make it politically easier to send U.S. troops to Mexico—which Trump’s advisers have said he wants to do—without asking Congress.”
https://reason.com/2025/01/20/trump-brings-the-war-on-terror-into-the-war-on-drugs