Trump is seeing terrorists in surprising new places

President Trump has emerged as the king of terrorist designations.

In less than a year in office, he has added more groups to the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list than any other administration did over four years.

He’s done it by expanding the definition of who qualifies as a terrorist, stretching it beyond its usual bounds of ideologically based outfits to include smuggling cartels and nation-hopping gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, whose motivation is more about money or power than about desire to terrorize.

Mr. Trump, though, is focused on the ends, not the means. He says the tens of thousands of Americans slain by fentanyl each year far outstrip the deaths due to radical Islamic attacks, so groups that traffic the drugs deserve the full force of terrorism law.

Since the initial list of FTOs was released in 1997, no other president had ever added more than six in a year. Mr. Trump has added 25.

Of those, 15 are in the Western Hemisphere, or nearly double the total of the previous five administrations.

The State Department said Mr. Trump is responding to the global situation.

“We are moving at the speed of relevance because the threat environment demands it,” Tommy Pigott, the department’s principal deputy spokesperson, told The Washington Times. “For too long, malaise, incompetence and bureaucratic hesitation prevented past administrations from designating dangerous actors as what they truly are.”

Some experts, though, say Mr. Trump’s expansion risks diluting the power of the list and could diminish its power as the international standard.

“Using these mechanisms to target cartels is a significant departure because drug cartels are typically motivated by profit,” said Thomas E. Brzozowski, former counsel for domestic terrorism in the Justice Department. “This is taking traditionally what had been a criminal function and casting it as a national security problem.”

He said the law already has tools that apply to the cartels, such as the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.

The Biden administration resisted calls to designate Mexico’s cartels as terrorists, suggesting it didn’t make much difference on the ground in how authorities pursued the organizations.

But in the months since Mr. Trump’s designation, it’s become clear that the Biden team lacked imagination.

Mr. Trump has used the designation of Tren de Aragua as part of the basis for his strikes on drug boats in the Pacific and Caribbean, plus as partial justification for his use of the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportations of some Venezuelans.

One outcome has been to populate the government’s terrorism watch list with new names.

That’s evident from the number of people on the list being detected crossing the country’s borders, which had grown from a couple dozen a month to nearly 1,000 a month in October and November.

Experts said it’s not that new terrorists are flooding in, but people who weren’t flagged as terrorism suspects in the past now are.

Analysts say the danger in using the terrorist label so broadly is that it could start to be used in unforeseen areas, such as illegal immigration.

Nearly every migrant that crosses the border from Mexico into Arizona pays a “mafia fee” to some faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of those Mr. Trump designated. A zealous federal prosecutor could make the case that money is material support for terrorism.

If a relative or border charity group helped the migrant pay the smuggling fee, they also could be on the wrong side of the law.

Or take the case of someone who’s a cousin of a cartel member. Something as simple as a nice wedding gift could be stretched to be material support, said Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Do I think that’s imminent? No, but this administration surprises me on a daily basis,” he said.

Financial institutions will also have to adjust, imposing new controls to make sure they aren’t holding any assets that can be tied to the cartels. Not only is that difficult, but it also creates a danger of institutions leaving certain spaces without banking, Mr. Byman said.

“I worry that there will just be parts of the world that don’t have the services they deserve because of this,” he said.

The Trump administration has already broken new ground with economic sanctions against the reputed paramour of TdA leader Nino Guerrero. The U.S. government said Jimena Araya Navarro, also known by the stage name Rosita, dedicated a portion of her performance income to the gang.

The Treasury Department also slapped sanctions on Ricardo Hernandez Medrano, a so-called narco-rapper who goes by the stage name El Makabelico and who, according to the U.S., gave half the proceeds from his music streaming business to the Cartel del Noreste.

The law requiring a list was passed in 1996 in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 1995’s Oklahoma City federal building bombing, Mr. Brzozowski said. Congress’ intent was pretty clearly traditional terrorism groups, he said.

“When you dilute that, I think there’s a real danger of making what had been a very potent statute to target that less potent,” he said.

That includes a “fracturing” of the international treatment of the U.S. list as a model.

“The more you stretch this particular statute that was enacted in connection to a particular threat, namely international terrorism, the less effective it becomes over time,” Mr. Brzozowski said. “Construing that sort of activity as terrorism — I think it’s inappropriate, frankly, but those that are in the State Department making these determinations obviously have a different view.”

Then there’s the Cartel de los Soles, designated in November. Mr. Byman said that’s not a cartel but rather a nickname or shorthand for referring to a loosely defined group of corrupt senior officials in the Venezuelan military.

“This is truly a stretch, Mr. Byman said. “The cartels are real organizations, even if I wouldn’t use the terrorism label. This is not even a thing.”

The initial 1997 list included 30 organizations, ranging from Hamas and Hezbollah to Peru’s Shining Path and Japan’s Red Army.

Al Qaeda didn’t formally make the list until 1999, a year after it orchestrated attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa.

The list steadily expanded, with additions far outstripping deletions. While Middle Eastern groups dominated, some groups from Greece and Colombia earned their way onto the list.

In one period in 2021, Mr. Trump, a day before the end of his previous term, named Ansarallah. President Biden canceled the designation less than a month later, saying he feared it would hinder the ability to deliver humanitarian aid amid the civil war in Yemen.

Mr. Trump re-designated the group in March.