Until 2025, the most groups designated as terrorist organizations in a single year was 13, the first year (1997) there was a list. This year, in February, the Trump Administration named 19 organizations. That’s one-third of all organizations so named in the last 20 years.
In 1997, the Clinton Administration put 13 organizations on the initial list, including Hamas, Hizballah, the National Liberation Army, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Front, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. There is a thread in this list: Israel/Palestine.
In 1999, the Clinton Administration named al-Qa’ida to that list.
The Trump Administration list of 19 contains less familiar names, in part because most organizations have been considered criminal organizations. They are international cartels that engage in a variety of illegal activities, including trafficking in drugs. But they are not waging battles of an international political nature or conducting suicide bombings as a political statement, for example. Their goal is to make money — or free imprisoned associates — not overthrow governments.
For example, Tren de Aragua is headquartered in Venezuela and is, according to NPR, a transnational criminal organization (so named in the Biden Administration). It smuggles drugs and traffics people. It’s on the Trump Administration list.
One of the world’s oldest drug cartels is the Sinaloa Cartel, and according to the Drug Enforcement Administration it is headquartered in Mexico, which is home to most fentanyl smuggling.
Cartel members engage in a wide range of violent illegal activities aimed at protecting their criminal empires and expanding their profits such as drug trafficking, money laundering, weapons trafficking, human smuggling, prostitution, and extortion.
It, too, is on Donald Trump’s list of terrorist organizations but his focus in on a nation state in South America.
What is terrorist activity?
Terrorist activity is defined in section 1182(a)(3)(B) of this title:
(iii) As used in this chapter, the term “terrorist activity”
means any activity which is unlawful under the laws of
the place where it is committed (or which, if it had been
committed in the United States, would be unlawful under the
laws of the United States or any State) and which involves any
of the following:
(I) The highjacking or sabotage of any conveyance
(including an aircraft, vessel, or vehicle).
(II) The seizing or detaining, and threatening to kill, injure,
or continue to detain, another individual in order to
compel a third person (including a governmental organization)
to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or
implicit condition for the release of the individual
seized or detained.
(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person
(as defined in section 1116(b)(4) of title 18 ) or upon the
liberty of such a person.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any— (a) biological agent, chemical agent, or
nuclear weapon or device, or (b) explosive, firearm, or
other weapon or dangerous device (other than for mere
personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly
or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to
cause substantial damage to property.
(VI) A threat, attempt, or conspiracy to do any of the foregoing.
Since September 2nd, the US has launched 16 military strikes that killed at least 66 people.
As many have noted since September 2, merely smuggling drugs does not appear to be justification for these murders.
Moreover, “the law that enables the executive branch to designate a group as terrorists triggers the power to freeze its assets and criminalize providing support to it, not to kill people suspected of membership.”
Two days after that first extrajudicial bombing, on September 4, Trump went to Congress to report on the attack as required by the War Powers Resolution. He provided no evidence or legal argument for the extra-judicial killing then. He has not since.
The Trump Administration was required by the 1973 War Powers Act to “cease any use of military force without Congressional authorization” on November 4. The 60-day clock that Congress intended as a way to remind the President that war powers reside with Congress, expired that day.
The silence about what legal theory can support Mr. Trump’s assertion that suspected drug smugglers are lawful military targets as “combatants” in an armed conflict dovetails with a growing pattern in his administration’s assertions of executive power.
The Administration stated that they would not comply with the law and they did not.
And Congress remains willfully impotent. On a 49-51 vote November 6, the Senate rejected legislation that would have “rein[ed] in the U.S. military campaign against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in Latin America.”
Trump — or those pulling his strings — wants a war to justify a permanent state of emergency. End of story.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com