The Trump administration designated Cartel de los Soles, which it says is headed by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a foreign terrorist organization.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, visited troops stationed in Puerto Rico on Nov. 24.

The Trump administration designated Cartel de los Soles, which it claims is headed by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as a foreign terrorist organization on Nov. 24 as the Trump administration indicates it could launch a military attack inside Venezuela's borders.

In recent months, President Donald Trump and his cabinet have renewed a pressure campaign to remove Maduro, a longtime adversary, from power. The Trump administration's saber-rattling against Maduro has been bolstered by a massive military buildup near Venezuela and deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed dozens of people.

Maduro and his associates already face criminal charges of "narcoterrorism" in a U.S. court, and Cartel de los Soles has been slapped with heavy sanctions.

The foreign terrorist organization, also known as FTO, designation "gives more tools" to the Defense Department "to give options" to Trump in dealing with cartels, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Nov. 21 interview.

"Headed by the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro," Cartel de los Soles "has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence" and drug trafficking, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X.

But experts said the designation is not a military tool, and that the organization it is leveled against – Cartel de los Soles – does not exist as an organized drug cartel.

Venezuela barely contributes to the flow of drugs coming into the United States, accounting for just a fraction of the cocaine. It is not a source of fentanyl, the drug responsible for most overdose deaths, which is primarily produced in Mexico, according to the State Department.

US military assets converge on Venezuela

For months, the United States has dispatched some of its most advanced military assets to the region, including its largest aircraft carrier, two guided missile destroyers and a special operations ship. Around 12,000 troops are stationed in the area.

Amid the rising pressure, U.S. bomber jets have skirted Venezuelan airspace multiple times, most recently on Nov. 21, when a flurry of planes, including a B-52 bomber and F/A-18 jet, flew near the coastline. Speculation that a strike was imminent mounted the same day after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice to major U.S. airlines to avoid Venezuelan airspace due to the "worsening military situation and heightened military activity."

Reuters reported on Nov. 22 that the U.S. would soon launch a new phase of military operations against Venezuela, beginning with covert operations. In an unusual move, Trump had announced in October that he had authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela.

But there may still be room to deescalate. Axios reported on Nov. 24 that Trump told advisors he was planning to speak directly to the Venezuelan leader, even after he cut off negotiations with Maduro's regime through his special envoy Richard Grenell months ago.

Since early September, the Trump administration has bombed at least 21 boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific in international waters, killing 83 people – many of them Venezuelans.

Trump officials have said without providing evidence that those boats were attempting to carry narcotics to the United States. Trump has sought to justify the strikes by declaring to some lawmakers that the nation is in a "non-international armed conflict" with drug cartels.

FTO designation would not greenlight military action

The designation of Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization is another move to ratchet up the pressure on Maduro, experts said, but it wouldn't give Trump any additional justification to strike inside the country.

The FTO designation is the "nuclear bomb" of sanctions, said Nathan Sales, a former State Department counterterrorism coordinator and special envoy during Trump's first term. "Any designated FTO is ejected from the U.S. financial system," he said.

It also has secondary consequences, meaning entities that do business with designated FTOs could face criminal charges or could themselves be sanctioned.

But the designation does not authorize military force, according to Sales. The administration "might put those elements in place alongside other elements of a pressure campaign, but they would be parallel" to military action, he said.

Mike Vigil, a retired three-decade special agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency, said the designation would allow the administration to seize U.S. bank accounts related to the organization, to sanction American citizens providing material support, and would let the federal government "take measures to prevent members of these groups from entering the United States."

Experts say Cartel de los Soles does not exist

Allegations of drug trafficking and corruption have been leveled at Maduro and his inner circle for years. During Trump's first term in 2020, Maduro and several of his top officials and military generals were charged with narco-terrorism and collaborating with the FARC, a Colombian leftist guerrilla group, to "flood" the U.S. with cocaine.

In July, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Cartel de los Soles, defined as a "Venezuela-based criminal group headed by Nicolas Maduro Moros and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals in the Maduro regime."

But experts say "Cartel de los Soles" ranges from a non-cartel entity to nonexistent.

"There is no such thing as the Cartel de los Soles," said Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

The name dates back to 1993, when two anti-narcotics officials in Venezuela's military were themselves accused of drug trafficking, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that tracks organized crime in the Americas. The term – which translates to "cartel of the suns" – refers to the sun design on the epaulettes of Venezuela's military commanders.

The term "Cartel de los Soles" grew out of the slang of that era, Tree said.

"There is certainly a lot of drug corruption among the military of Venezuela. They’re the best situated to cash in, to seek rent on their positions," Tree said. But they don't function as an organized cartel or meet regularly with each other, he said.

Vigil said the name traces back to the 1990s, when some Venezuelan military generals and politicians under then-president Hugo Chavez, the socialist strongman that Maduro succeeded, maintained corrupt ties with the FARC.

"They colluded with them, protected them, allowed them to operate in Venezuela," Vigil said.

Later on, the Cartel de los Soles took on a more involved role in the drug trade, Vigil said. But they remained a loose network of officials in government and the military with no organized structure, he added.

"They don't have the infrastructure of the cartels," Vigil said. "Naming them a terrorist organization lacks congruity."

"There’s zero fentanyl involved in Venezuela, statistically speaking," he added. "It’s not even worth talking about."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What the US labeling Venezuelan 'Cartel de los Soles' terrorists means

Reporting by Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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