Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists

( printed page 8439) Executive Order 14157 of January 20, 2025 Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq. it is hereby ordered: Section 1 . Purpose. This order creates a process by which certain international cartels (the Cartels) and other organizations will be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, consistent with section 219 of the INA ( 8 U.S.C. 1189 ), or Specially Designated Global Terrorists, consistent with IEEPA ( 50 U.S.C. 1702 ) and Executive Order 13224 of September 23, 2001 (Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism), as amended. (a) International cartels constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime, with activities encompassing: (i) convergence between themselves and a range of extra-hemispheric actors, from designated foreign-terror organizations to antagonistic foreign governments; (ii) complex adaptive systems, characteristic of entities engaged in insurgency and asymmetric warfare; and (iii) infiltration into foreign governments across the Western Hemisphere. The Cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs. The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States. In certain portions of Mexico, they function as quasi-governmental entities, contr…