U.S. to designate criminal groups as terrorist organizations

The U.S. Trump administration plans to designate more than a half-dozen criminal groups with roots in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations, reports the New York Times. The move follows a January executive order calling for a crackdown on major cartels and is expected to be applied to eight groups.

According to NYT the designation will apply to Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua, MS-13, the Colombian-based Clan del Golfo, and five Mexican-based criminal groups — the Sinaloa cartel, Jalisco New Generation cartel, the Northeast cartel, the Michoacán family and the United cartels.

More Organized Crime

• The life stories of a group of women in Peru’s capital “serve as an accidental criminal barometer for the city, showing the early impacts of the predatory criminal economies that have fueled Tren de Aragua’s expansion in Lima,” according to a new InSight Crime investigation.

Regional Relations

• Terrance “Terry” Cole, Trump’s nominee as the next administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, has “an iron-fisted discourse against drug-trafficking networks south of the border,” reports El País. His “arrival reinforces the narrative that drug trafficking is a “plague” that comes from beyond U.S. borders and poses a threat to Washington’s national security, with the complicity of Mexican authorities.”

Migration

• Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration yesterday to gain access to detained migrants who they say have been flown to Guantanamo Bay and held there without being able to consult lawyers or speak to relatives, reports the Associated Press. According to the lawsuit, at least 50 people are being held there. The detainees are receiving the same treatment that thousands of victims of the war on terrorism launched during the George W. Bush administration were subjected to, reports El País.

• Jamaicans living in the United States who are at risk of being deported because of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown should consider returning home on their own said Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, the latest leader in the hemisphere to call on nationals to consider returning home, reports the Miami Herald.

Jamaica

• A security crackdown in Jamaica belies a downward trend in homicide rates, while a dramatic increase in fatal victims shot by security forces calls into question the government’s state of emergency methodology, reports the Guardian. “Experts say that the figures reflect an anti-crime strategy that needs to be broadened to address problems rooted in a complex combination of social, political and economic factors.”

Nicaragua

• If the U.S. Trump administration wants to pressure Daniel Ortega into a democratic transition, it should restore USAID assistance to Nicaragua’s opposition and instead focus on targeting the financial networks sustaining his regime. Prioritizing a revision of CAFTA-DR is crucial, as Nicaragua benefits from U.S. market access despite failing to comply with the trade agreement, argue Antonio Monte and Gema Kloppe-Santamaría in Americas Quarterly.

Brazil

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will meet with environmental agency Ibama this week or the next to discuss Petrobras’ bid to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon river, reports Reuters.

El Salvador

• El Salvador’s Bukele dominated National Assembly took advantage of a newly streamlined constitutional reform process to eliminate public financing of political campaigns, reports the Associated Press.

• Lawakers also voted to allow minors convicted of crimes linked to organized crime to be housed in the same prisons as adults, albeit in separate areas, reports Reuters.

Colombia

• “The marshes in Colombia’s capital are sacred to Indigenous peoples, provide vital wildlife habitats and could help the city adapt to climate change. But after centuries of development they are close to collapse,” reports the Guardian.

History

• The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, a British shipping company that became the largest in the world at the height of empire, continued to use enslaved labour after the abolition of slavery, according to new research commissioned by the Postal Museum. (Guardian)

Critter Corner

• A humpback whale started to swallow a kayaker in the Straight of Magellan, but rapidly spat him out. The kayaker was unharmed, and his father caught the moment on camera. (El País)