The Trump administration has designated two gangs from Ecuador, Los Lobos and Los Choneros, as foreign terrorist organizations, only the latest Latin American criminal organizations to be given that designation amid a U.S. push to militarize its response to criminal gangs and drug trafficking in the region.
Designating criminal organizations as terrorist groups gives the United States a degree of legal cover for high-profile activities like recent deportations of alleged gang members and this week’s airstrike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean. However, as James Bosworth wrote in May, the Trump administration has not accompanied these highly visible operations with the kind of sustained multi-agency effort needed to disrupt the financing, firearms and operations of the groups. “The administration’s counterterrorism approach appears to be a policy designed for domestic consumption rather than international effect,” Bosworth concluded.
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