Rubio designates Ecuadorean gang as terrorist group, sanctions officials

Strike is 69th of yearlong campaign that has killed at least 230

The Trump administration has designated 21 Latin American drug cartels and gangs since February. On Sept. 9, the same day as the latest military strike, Rubio designated Ecuadorean gang Los Tiguerones as both a foreign terrorist organization and a specially designated global terrorist.

The overlapping designations do not provide a legal framework for the strikes. The foreign terrorist organization label criminalizes material support and carries immigration and financial penalties, while the global terrorist designation carries sanctions that freeze U.S.-based assets of those listed, among other consequences.

Rubio accused Los Tiguerones of involvement in narcotrafficking and “other illicit activity” and of responsibility for the January 2024 seizure of a television station amid a wave of gang violence across Ecuador.

“The Trump administration will continue to use all available tools to protect our nation by keeping illicit drugs off our streets and disrupting the revenue streams funding violent narcoterrorists,” Rubio said in a statement announcing the designations.

Rubio separately announced sanctions against seven former Ecuadorian officials accused of “significant corruption.” He said the officials accepted bribes from Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Los Choneros and Los Lobos — all U.S.-designated terrorist groups — to meddle in judicial, electoral or public processes.

Seemingly referring to the importance of the terrorist designations, Rubio said the groups needed to be dismantled both physically, by blowing up their boats, and financially.

Rubio told reporters in Quito that the criminal groups had become deeply rooted in societies and said people in governments were complicit with the groups and their activities. He said the groups had become more powerful than governments in many cases and would consume countries if they were not confronted.

Rubio compared the groups’ growth to cancer and warned that countries could lose functioning states and become ungovernable territories. He welcomed regional leaders who were serious about pursuing the groups and warned that inaction could produce failed country after failed country in the region.

The campaign has shifted and expanded in recent months as the Trump administration has courted other countries to participate in joint military operations. While U.S. strikes have seemingly slowed, Rubio told reporters Wednesday in Ecuador that other countries had also been conducting strikes.

“We’ve been doing it now for over a year, and now the difference is that we’re … working alongside countries in the region, in their territorial waters,” Rubio said.

Under the direction of U.S. Southern Command, Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere carried out the Sept. 9 strike on what SOUTHCOM described as a “go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean.”

SOUTHCOM said confirmed intelligence showed the vessel’s active involvement in narcotrafficking, but the command did not provide proof. The strike killed three people aboard the vessel.

The command released little information about the attack. A 10-second video SOUTHCOM shared late Wednesday shows a canopied boat seemingly stationary on the water before it erupts into smoke and flames.

The strike was the first this month and the third since attacks resumed in August following a two-month lull that began in late June. Unlike strikes conducted before the pause, SOUTHCOM did not identify the vessel targeted Wednesday or the two vessels targeted late last month as being operated by designated terrorist organizations, language the administration has used in framing the campaign.

The attack was the 69th publicly acknowledged strike in the Trump administration’s yearlong military campaign. The campaign has killed at least 230 people whom the administration alleges were drug traffickers, though at least some of those killed are believed to have been civilians.

Democrats and human and civil rights advocates have described the strikes as extrajudicial killings and murder. They have criticized the military’s use of lethal force without charges being filed or cases being tried in court.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a case against the Trump administration accusing it of killing two men who were allegedly returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago after working on farms in Venezuela.

The administration has justified the strikes by saying it is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels. Its legal framework supporting the strikes and the list of cartels and gangs that can be targeted are classified.

Asked whether there was concern that fishermen had been killed in the strikes, Rubio said the administration’s goal was to pursue drug traffickers rather than fishermen.

“Our goal is not to go after fishermen; our goal is to go after drug traffickers. Our goal is to go after drug boats,” Rubio said.