(NewsNation) — The State Department on Wednesday designated eight transnational criminal organizations as global terrorist organizations, including five drug cartels.
Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels are among those named terrorists by the Trump administration, which had been saying they would make this move for a while.
Making these groups terrorist organizations allows U.S. law enforcement to go after their assets and people they know, such as their associates or even family members living in America.
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Some of the other consequences include legal ramifications if someone helps a designated terrorist organization, as well as travel bans on members.
Because the Drug Enforcement Agency has said there’s a cartel presence in all 50 states, officials will be given more power to move within the country.
No more ‘catch and release’
In other immigration news, NewsNation obtained through Department of Homeland Security sources a directive calling for the detention of undocumented migrants who did not previously get a court date or charging document.
All Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel have been told to detain anyone in the country under “catch and release.” Officers, the directive said, should review individuals for re-detention if they were released because there was not initially a significant likelihood of removal in the foreseeable future.
Retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office Director John Fabbricatore said that a lot of these cases were already on the docket with ERO.
“Some of them should have probably been processed differently when they came across the border, but because of the limited detention space that we had, instead of them detaining them and actually going through the whole case, they were just released into the interior of the United States,” Fabbricatore said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
