- The Trump White House is repurposing the potent framing of “terrorism” to go after a new set of enemies – drug cartels, migrants and domestic political opponents. Its words and deeds pose serious risks to the U.S. constitutional order, civil liberties and maybe peace as well
By Brian Finucane, Senior Adviser ICG (U.S.)
The U.S. “war on terror” has a menacing new look.
In January, President Donald Trump again took the reins of the longstanding, multi-front U.S. military campaign against Islamist militants. As during his first term in office, Trump has often prosecuted this war with renewed or greater intensity. His administration quickly repealed the Biden White House’s restrictions on counter-terrorism strikes. As during his previous term, the U.S. military continued bombing al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates in Somalia, Syria and Iraq under the core counter-terrorism statute – the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Force (2001 AUMF). After redesignating Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organisation (FTO) (which he had done in his first term and Biden had undone), Trump also took the U.S. back to war in Yemen, responding to Houthi threats to international shipping in the Red Sea. Relying on the president’s claimed authority as “commander-in-chief” under the Constitution, Trump has reportedly signed off on a more aggressive air campaign against the Houthis than Biden was willing to approve.
But while continuing to wage this iteration of the war on terror in the Middle East and Africa, the Trump administration has also repurposed the tools and tropes of counter-terrorism against new targets: drug cartels and migrants. It is also regularly using the rhetoric of counter-terrorism against the president’s domestic political opponents. In so doing, it is claiming authority to wield broad, weakly constrained power at home and abroad. In some respects, the Trump administration is taking more extreme actions than President George W. Bush’s White House did in the initial period following the 11 September 2001 attacks – a period notorious for detainee abuse and efforts to circumvent the rule of law. Further, the administration’s words and actions could well be setting the stage for a new war in Mexico.
Cartels as Terrorists
Even during his first term, President Trump reportedly mused privately about conducting missile strikes on drug cartels in Mexico. Framing drug cartels as terrorists or more generally as military foes, which had previously been a fringe idea, gained traction within the Republican Party during the 2024 presidential primary contest. In parallel, a number of lawmakers introduced legislation respectively designating cartels as FTOs and fentanyl as weapon of mass destruction, a phrase evocative of Bush administration’s casus belli vis-à-vis Iraq in 2003, and authorising the use of military force against a number of named and to-be-named drug trafficking organisations. The statutory vehicle was a war authorisation modelled on the 2001 AUMF; it was co-sponsored by then Congressman Mike Waltz, who is now Trump’s national security advisor.
The second Trump administration has leaned into the terrorist framing for drug trafficking organisations with gusto.
The second Trump administration has leaned into the terrorist framing for drug trafficking organisations with gusto. Most explicitly, in February it designated eight Latin American criminal entities as FTOs: Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Cártel de Sinaloa, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, Cártel del Noreste, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Cártel de Golfo and Cárteles Unidos. The application of this authority to drug cartels and gangs was unprecedented. But in a sense, it followed the norm-breaking pattern of the first Trump administration, which had so designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – the first time the U.S. had used this authority to designate a state entity. Though an FTO designation does not by itself provide authority for the use of force, it is an escalatory measure, and in some cases, U.S. officials view it as a stepping stone to military action. Just as designating the Revolutionary Guards helped pave the way for the January 2020 drone strike that killed that group’s commander, Qassem Soleimani, so classifying cartels as terrorists may serve the same function.
The rhetoric of figures close to Trump certainly suggests something similar could be afoot here. Tom Homan, who would become the administration’s “border czar”, remarked in November 2024 that Trump was “committed to calling [the cartels] terrorist organisations and using the full might of the United States special operations to take them out”. In mid-February of the next year, soon after the designations were revealed, Elon Musk commented on social media that designating groups as FTOs “means they’re eligible for drone strikes”. Later, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth emphasised on Fox News that “all options will be on the table if we’re dealing with what are designated to be foreign terrorist organisations who are specifically targeting Americans on our border.”
A New Angle: The Alien Enemies Act
As Crisis Group has noted elsewhere, the subsequent invocation by President Trump of the Alien Enemies Act with respect to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, explicitly built upon the prior terrorism designation and, like that decision, repurposed a national security legal authority to a completely new end. The 1798 law provides that:
Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as alien enemies.
Dating back to the 18th-century Quasi-War between the U.S. and France, the Alien Enemies Act has been invoked on only three occasions, each involving a war declared by Congress: the War of 1812 (with the United Kingdom), World War I and World War II. In each case, it allowed the U.S. government heightened powers to remove nationals of the party it was fighting from the U.S.
In his proclamation invoking the act, Trump claimed that Tren de Aragua was “perpetrating an invasion” of the U.S. and that the entity was “closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated” President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas. He made this statement despite U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly casting doubt on the nature of the relationship between the Maduro government and Tren de Aragua. Notably, Trump stopped short of directly accusing Venezuela of invading the U.S., possibly because the administration wants its cooperation in repatriating migrants directly from the U.S.
Shortly after Trump’s proclamation, three flights carrying 238 Venezuelan deportees (as well as 23 Salvadorans) departed the U.S. and landed in El Salvador. Of the Venezuelans, 137 were deported under the terms of the Alien Enemies Act, according to the White House. The U.S. government is reportedly paying El Salvador to incarcerate them for at least a year (and possibly forever) in the Centre of Confinement of Terrorists (CECOT), a maximum-security prison notorious for brutal conditions.
The Trump administration subsequently framed the rendition of Venezuelans to El Salvador as necessary to protect the U.S. from the scourge of terrorism. The White House published an article, “President Trump Delivers Justice to Terrorists, Security for Americans”, which compiled quotes from administration officials and friendly members of Congress lauding the action. On Fox News, Waltz asserted that Tren de Aragua was “no different than ISIS”. In boasting about a subsequent transfer of alleged members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 to El Salvador, the State Department labelled them as “terrorists” and characterised the deportation flight as a “counter-terrorism operation”.
More Muscle Flexing
The Trump administration has taken other steps to elevate perceptions of the threat posed by groups spuriously tagged as terrorists. For the first time, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence listed drug cartels in the first (most serious) category of threats to the U.S. in its annual threat assessment, which draws upon the views of various intelligence agencies. In so doing, it placed them in the same section with ISIS and al-Qaeda. Administration witnesses then played up the danger during a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A well-informed U.S. official told Crisis Group that the forthcoming U.S. counter-terrorism strategy is likely to identify three categories of terrorist threats to the U.S.: Sunni jihadists, Shiite Islamist militants and cartels.
The Trump administration may well invoke further terrorism or wartime authorities against the cartels in coming months. The application of the Alien Enemies Act to Tren de Aragua could be a test case for use of this law against other criminal entities designated as foreign terrorist organisations. In addition, the administration is reportedly deliberating about whether to classify “illicit” fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
The Trump administration’s legal flexing and rhetorical flourishes are accompanied by concrete actions evoking the war on terror. The deportation of alleged Tren de Aragua members to CECOT in El Salvador echoes the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition in which suspected terrorists were sent to sites overseas for abuse at facilities run by the CIA or foreign partners. As with Bush’s war on terror, Trump’s renditions of supposed terrorists involve erroneous transfers of men into abusive conditions abroad based on sloppy misclassifications.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military has begun deploying assets previously used in lethal counter-terrorism strikes overseas around or in Mexico. The Trump administration has significantly increased the number of military surveillance flights along the U.S.-Mexican border. It has also reportedly stepped up U.S. drone flights in Mexican airspace. Though, for now, the U.S. is sharing the targets developed with this aerial surveillance with the Mexican government for it to act against (including to make arrests), the U.S. could use the same intelligence for strikes by its own armed drones in the future. Indeed, there are reports that U.S. intelligence agencies are reviewing the authorities for and potential legal implications of direct action in Mexico targeting drug cartels.
Migrants as Terrorists
The Trump administration has applied its terrorist framing not just to Latin American criminal organisations but to Latin American migrants as well. On the first day of his second term, President Trump issued a proclamation falsely declaring unlawful migration across the U.S. southern border an “invasion”.
The administration soon embarked on theatrical military displays portrayed at fending off this purported invasion. It deployed additional U.S. troops to the southern border, where Defense Secretary Hegseth, among others, paid them a visit. It dispatched military aircraft to deport migrants to countries of origin in Latin America – precipitating a brief diplomatic crisis with Colombia in the process. In an unprecedented move, the administration began shipping migrants to the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – a location infamous for holding alleged terrorists apprehended in post-9/11 counter-terrorism operations. In the 1990s, a Guantánamo facility was used to house tens of thousands of migrants picked up at sea en route to the U.S., but not migrants brought from the U.S. The White House memorandum directing the use of Guantánamo to detain migrants claimed it was necessary to halt the alleged “border invasion”.
The [Trump] administration has stuck by the terrorist framing when challenged.
The administration has stuck by the terrorist framing when challenged. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, responding on social media to litigation over the erroneous and apparently unlawful rendition of a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to CECOT asserted that the “alien was a member of a designated terrorist organisation, ineligible for any form of relief under the law. The only process he was entitled to was deportation”. After the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a district court order to “facilitate” the man’s return to the U.S., Miller doubled down, baselessly labelling the man as an “illegal alien terrorist”. Litigation continues over Abrego Garcia’s mistaken rendition.
The Trump administration has also signalled further militarisation of its response to migration. In his 20 January declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, President Trump ordered preparation of a report on whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 – an action he reportedly contemplated during his first term. The Act allows the president to deploy active-duty soldiers and federalised National Guard troops to enforce federal law or suppress a rebellion against federal authority – actions that are normally barred. It was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, in response to riots in Los Angeles set off by an incident of police brutality the previous year.
Then, in April, Trump issued a further directive to convert federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border into something like a military buffer zone and branded the order as another measure to repel an invasion. Migrants crossing into this strip of land could be temporarily detained by military personnel and face enhanced criminal penalties for trespassing on a military reserve.
Domestic Political Opponents as Terrorists
The Trump administration has also marshalled anti-terrorism rhetoric to disparage domestic political opponents. In responding to the arrest and attempted deportation of a Columbia University graduate student for protected speech and beliefs, The president vowed to deport “terrorist sympathisers”. (The administration subsequently dramatically expanded the targeting of foreign students for deportation based on their political views.) Trump has indicated that people damaging Tesla automobiles (because of Tesla executive Musk’s role in the administration) should be labelled as “domestic terrorists”. The president also threatened to send such ostensible “terrorists” to prisons in El Salvador – an option the White House has continued to keep open when questioned. In announcing federal charges against individuals accused of arson at Tesla dealerships, Attorney General Pam Bondi characterised such acts as “domestic terrorism”.
The tactics of immigration officials apprehending students for deportation in retaliation for their speech also evoke the post-9/11 war on terror. Many have been rapidly removed from their states of residence and rapidly transported across state lines, not only because the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility is located in Louisiana (in the south east, often far from where the students were living) but apparently also to frustrate the attempts of lawyers to file habeas corpus petitions on their behalf. In some cases, ICE agents have dramatically masked their faces with black balaclavas.
Same but Different: A Radical Repurposing
Trump’s repurposing of counter-terrorism rhetoric and tools differs for good or ill from the conflict launched by the George W. Bush administration in 2001.
First and foremost, the post-9/11 war on terror was waged in response to an armed attack on the U.S. that killed almost 3,000 people – the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians targeted by al-Qaeda on purpose. For all its subsequent excesses and abuses that appeared to cross the line into criminality (eg, the Bush administration’s torture program), the conflict was prompted by a real threat to the U.S. public and a sharp national trauma. It reflected a widely held view that traditional law enforcement tools had failed to protect the country and that only a Congressionally authorised military operation could appropriately address the danger.
The Trump administration’s broad applications of the terrorist label have no similar predicate.
The Trump administration’s broad applications of the terrorist label have no similar predicate. The U.S. has not suffered a comparable attack by any of the purported terrorists identified by the administration. Indeed, none of these groups or individuals – criminal organisations, migrants, domestic political opponents – fit any reasonable definition of terrorist. That term that has no fixed legal definition but is generally reserved for non-state actors using violence against civilians to advance political ends. Nor is there a comparable consensus that traditional law enforcement or immigration tools are inadequate for tackling what are real (though non-terrorist) challenges.
Secondly, much of the Bush administration’s war on terror was waged “in the shadows” as Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, put it, referring to the vast array of diplomatic, financial and intelligence tools that were deployed in the effort. By contrast, the Trump administration’s iterations are ostentatiously theatrical. The Bush administration conducted its rendition of alleged terrorists through the CIA under covert action authorities – meaning that the U.S. hand was not intended to be seen nor acknowledged. In contrast, the Trump administration has disseminated slickly produced videos of its rendition flights to El Salvador, and Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, posed for the cameras while visiting CECOT kitted out in paramilitary gear and a $50,000 Rolex watch. Such costumes have become de rigueur among the administration’s national security officials and are in keeping with the use of military aircraft as costly props for deportation and Guantánamo Bay as an expensive stage for migration theatre.
Thirdly, despite all these flourishes, the Trump administration’s invocations of terrorism have not been accompanied by actual armed conflict – at least not yet. The uses of force cloaked in such language have been limited to detentions and renditions. But a change may be coming. The Trump administration appears to be setting the stage – almost literally – for the use of military force in Mexico against drug cartels.
To What End?
There are several plausible explanations for why the Trump administration has repurposed the terrorism framing in these ways.
First, labelling perceived threats as terrorists or alien enemies unlocks otherwise unavailable statutory powers. For example, members of foreign terrorist organisations who are not U.S. citizens are inadmissible to and in certain circumstances removable from the U.S. Similarly, the Alien Enemies Act confers broad authority to deport the citizens of the designated enemy with only limited judicial review.
Secondly, there may be a political benefit as well: labelling deemed adversaries as terrorists or terrorist sympathisers may help cow opposition from members of Congress and thus provide it with greater room for manoeuvre. It may also help with the public. Immigration remains one of the issues where President Trump’s policies enjoy the highest approval.
Thirdly, the invocation of counter-terrorism and wartime authorities also helps prepare the political ground for actual U.S. hostilities with drug trafficking organisations. A divide has reportedly emerged within the administration between those favouring U.S. military action in Mexico and hard-core immigration restrictionists concerned that such measures would derail U.S.-Mexican cooperation on migration. Though no final decision has yet been made, deliberations are reportedly under way over whether to conduct unilateral drone strikes on the cartels. If Trump decides to proceed, with or without the Mexican government’s consent, it is hard to imagine the diminishing constraints on presidential war powers holding him back.
How to Respond?
The Trump administration’s appropriation of “terrorism” tools and rhetoric threatens the rule of law at home and peace and security in the region, where prior efforts to militarise counter-narcotics efforts have led groups to splinter and violence to proliferate. There is little reason to think that unilateral U.S. military action in Mexico would be effective at countering the scourge of fentanyl. Moreover, any such actions by the Trump administration could spark retaliation from both the Mexican government (including with respect to cooperation on migration) and the drug cartels being targeted by the United States.
Many of the Trump administration’s measures in this realm are the subject of legal challenges, which have met with some limited success. But historically courts act in a way that is piecemeal and reactive, and they are reluctant to challenge the executive branch on national security matters. They cannot be relied on to place strong safeguards on this second coming of the war on terror.
That job will fall first and foremost to the U.S. Congress. While Trump’s supporters outnumber his opponents in Congress, that does not mean that those with concerns about the new “war on terror” lack tools for reining it in. Even if they find it difficult to enact new legal safeguards, they can prepare draft legislation to rally political opposition and educate the U.S. public about the risks the administration’s actions pose both at home and abroad. Examples include recent efforts by members of Congress to highlight the case of Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man the administration sent to CECOT due to an “administrative error”. These include Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen’s announcement of his intent to travel to El Salvador if Abrego Garcia is not returned (Van Hollen represents the state of Maryland, where Abrego Garcia was living), and collective steps by some members to legislatively oppose U.S. military operations in Mexico.
Legislators should not be intimidated by the administration’s cynical attempts to wield issues of migration, crime and fentanyl abuse as political weapons, even when the executive branch deploys the terrorism trope. Instead, members of Congress should highlight the dangers represented by the growing, unchecked concentration of power in the executive branch. They should explain how this stands to make the U.S. public less safe and less free, including by driving the U.S. into an absurd and unnecessary war. They should remind their fellow politicians and the public that elective wars tend not to wear well in practice or politically – and that political courage now can both set them up to look good in hindsight and help stem years of future costs.
The above is a new commentary from the International Crisis Group (ICG)
