The U.S. State Department has designated two additional Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, including one believed to be responsible for the massacre of U.S. citizens in Sonora in 2019.
The foreign terrorist designations for the Juárez Cartel and Los Viagras are the first for Mexico-based drug cartels since the Trump administration designated a slate of them in February 2025.
The Juárez Cartel is based in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, directly across from El Paso, Texas.
Its violent La Línea faction is largely believed to be responsible for the 2019 killing of nine U.S. citizens, including six children, from an independent Mormon settlement in the Mexican state of Sonora, south of Arizona.
The Los Viagras cartel is based in the western Mexican state of Michoacan. Two other cartels based in that state were designated as terrorist organizations early in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Drug cartels, which are primarily motivated by money rather than ideology, historically did not receive foreign terror designations prior to the current Trump administration.
“The Trump administration will continue to use all available tools to protect our nation by keeping poison off our streets and disrupting the revenue streams funding violent narco-terrorists,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
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Leadership clarified that non-members — including employees or residents, guests of tribal members, travelers on public roadways and vendors tied to the Tohono O’odham Gaming Enterprise — may still travel freely “without any restrictions.” -
As officials turn to native trees to deal with urban heat, Sonora is hoping to create a "green lung" in the state capital. -
The U.S. Agriculture Department plans to reopen part of the U.S.-Mexico border to cattle later this month. On Aug. 24, the Douglas, Arizona, port will become the first to allow cattle from Mexico to travel into the United States. -
Mexican authorities have arrested a former Mexican governor accused of concealing evidence related to the case of 43 students who went missing in 2014. -
As summer temperatures have soared, so too have cases of dehydration and heatstroke in the Mexican state south of Arizona.
