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Trump administration Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in an order from the State Department.
The groups include Cartel de Sinaloa, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, Carteles Unidos, Cartel del Noreste, Cartel del Golfo and La Nueva Familia Michoacana, along with the international group Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).
“This determination shall be published in the Federal Register. The designations go into effect upon publication,” Rubio’s order noted.
The order states that these groups “present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” and invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEP) to declare a national emergency to “deal with those threats.”
“It is the policy of the United States to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States and their ability to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States through their extraterritorial command-and-control structures, thereby protecting the American people and the territorial integrity of the United States,” reads the order.
In October, President Trump said during a press conference that he would seize the assets of drug cartels and gangs to create a restitution fund for victims of migrant crime.
Trump shared the policy issue during a Mar-a-Lago press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“I’m announcing that for the first time under my administration, we are seizing the assets of the criminal gangs and drug cartels and we will use those assets to create a compensation fund to provide restitution for the victims of migrant crime,” he stated.
During the event, Trump also played a video from the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. The daughter was reportedly raped and murdered by two illegal immigrants.
“I truly believe this all could have been prevented. Under [Kamala Harris] being Vice President of this country, my daughter’s life was ripped away from her. She had her entire life ahead of her. My daughter is 6 feet in the ground based off of policies that [Kamala] allowed to keep,” the mother said in the video.