President Trump Issues Executive Order Designating Cartels as Terrorists

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office designating cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and specially designated global terrorists, granting authorities greater power to crack down on these violent organizations. The Jan. 20 executive order states that cartels are flooding the United States with “deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs,” with these groups posing “an unacceptable national security risk” to the country. The order says that 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.” Drugs flowing across the southern border have triggered a fentanyl crisis in the United States. A powerful opioid, fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine. Just two milligrams is enough to be fatal. Fentanyl precursors are often shipped from China to cartel members in Mexico and then trafficked into the United States....