The United States will designate Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Sunday, amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
In a statement, Rubio said the group is run by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose government the U.S. has called “illegitimate.”
“Based in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary,” Rubio said in a press release.
“Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government,” he continued. “Cartel de los Soles by and with other designated FTOs including Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel are responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe.”
“The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our national security interests and deny funding and resources to narco-terrorists,” he added.
The statement said the designation would take effect on Nov. 24.
The announcement comes hours after the U.S. Navy said the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier arrived in the Caribbean in what’s seen as an escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Maduro. The U.S. has carried out a series of strikes in recent months against boats the administration says are smuggling illegal drugs in the region.
The administration announced last month it would send the world’s largest aircraft carrier and its carrier air wing to the Caribbean. But the USS Gerald R. Ford was deployed in the Mediterranean, so a defense official said at the time that it could take a “good several days” before it arrived in the Southcom area.
Trump said Sunday night, after the State Department designation, that he is open to talking to Maduro.
“We may be having some discussions with Maduro, and we’ll see how that turns out,” he told reporters Sunday. “They would like to talk.”