“Cártel de los Soles “is actually a slang term, invented by the Venezuelan media in the 1990s, for officials who are corrupted by drug money.” As Savage explained in November, citing “a range of specialists in Latin American criminal and narcotics issues,” Cártel de los Soles “is not a literal organization” but rather “a figure of speech in Venezuela.”
In 2020, in other words, the Justice Department made a pretty embarrassing mistake, which it has sought to rectify in the revised indictment. Yet the Treasury Department and the State Department are still listing Cártel de los Soles, which federal prosecutors now say refers to “a patronage system” created by a bunch of corrupt government officials, as an FTO, which under federal law means “a foreign organization” that “engages in terrorist activity” threatening “the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States.””
Mexican cartels are using drones to drop bombs on rival cartels and police, and to intimidate civilians. Criminal organizations in many countries are using drones and have gotten good at using them in advanced ways.
“The two Trump administrations have launched as many airstrikes at overseas targets as any other administration. Although childish and superficial, his renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War doesn’t telegraph a love of peace. Nor does his authorized strike on a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean. His policies in the Middle East have amounted to little more than giving Israel the greenlight to do as it pleases. Then there were his attacks on nuclear sites in Iran and his constant threats to send troops to root out cartels in Mexico.
Whether or not you agree with these policies, they don’t adhere to any principled non-interventionist philosophy. And that takes us back to Russia and Ukraine. The problem with appeasement is that it emboldens the aggressor rather than secures lasting and just peace. No serious person is calling for American troops in Ukraine, but Trump’s insistence on blaming Ukraine and not pushing Russia for serious concessions has escalated the conflict.”
“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.”