Pam Bondi welcomes terror designation for transnational cartels

Attorney General Pam Bondi believes that President Donald Trump’s designation of transnational cartels as terror groups will help the federal government fight their depredations at home and abroad.

“They are terrorist groups. And it gives us the ability to go after them anywhere in the world and treat them as terrorists. They are terrorists. If you’re bringing fentanyl into this country and killing our kids, you’re a terrorist and we’re coming after you,” Bondi said at CPAC 2025 in Washington, D.C.

Trump’s executive order last month said “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, controlling nearly all aspects of society. The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere. Their activities, proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States pose an unacceptable national security risk to the United States.”

Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Cártel de Sinaloa, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, Cártel del Noreste (formerly Los Zetas), La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Cártel de Golfo (Gulf Cartel), and Cárteles Unidos all have the domestic terror designation from the State Department.

Though the crackdown has begun, Bondi worries that the open border policy of the previous administration means that domestic terror from people already in the country is a “huge risk.”

“What Donald Trump has committed to do is to take these people out of our country to prosecute them, to deport them, to get them off our streets. And that’s what all of these law enforcement agencies are doing,” Bondi said Thursday.