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Foreign terror designation won’t help reduce drug cartel crime, Mexico's president says

A Mexican Federal Police officer stands guard in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Juárez. Residents said some of their neighbors had left when the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels fought during some of the worst years of the violence on March 15, 2009.
Lorne Matalon/KJZZ
A Mexican Federal Police officer stands guard in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Juárez. Residents said some of their neighbors had left when the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels fought during some of the worst years of the violence on March 15, 2009.

Mexico’s president responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order designating drug cartels in Latin America as terrorist organizations, saying the designation won’t help stop the crime and violence waged by the cartels in her country.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said what would help is collaboration and coordination between the United States and Mexico, rather than a unilateral designation.

The move is part of Trump’s effort to crack down on the flow of fentanyl and other drugs that pass through the hands of cartels in Mexico and Central America. The designation puts several of those cartels on the same level as violent organizations in other parts of the world, including Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram.

Designating an entity a foreign terrorist organization comes with broad financial implications that experts say could have an impact on trade between the two countries.

More news from KJZZ's Hermosillo Bureau

Nina Kravinsky is a senior field correspondent covering stories about Sonora and the border from the Hermosillo, Mexico, bureau of KJZZ’s Fronteras Desk.