RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For years, Trinidad and To­ba­go has grap­pled with the con­se­quences of transna­tion­al crime—il­le­gal guns, nar­cotics, hu­man traf­fick­ing and the vi­o­lence that fol­lows.

Now, as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar deep­ens co­op­er­a­tion with the Unit­ed States, a new strat­e­gy is emerg­ing across the Caribbean.

It’s a joint ef­fort to tar­get the crim­i­nal net­works be­hind the trade and re­move their lead­ers through ag­gres­sive in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment part­ner­ships.

Speak­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists dur­ing a high-lev­el re­port­ing tour or­gan­ised by the US De­part­ment of State last week, US at­tor­ney Adam Gor­don, of the South­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia, spoke of a sig­nif­i­cant shift in Amer­i­can pol­i­cy.

Re­search shows that the Unit­ed States now main­tains a list of 75 des­ig­nat­ed For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tions (FTOs), a le­gal clas­si­fi­ca­tion that has ex­pand­ed be­yond tra­di­tion­al ex­trem­ist groups to in­clude some of the world’s most pow­er­ful drug car­tels.

The des­ig­na­tion al­lows Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties to pur­sue car­tel lead­ers, fi­nanciers and fa­cil­i­ta­tors with ter­ror­ism-re­lat­ed charges car­ry­ing penal­ties of up to life im­pris­on­ment.

Gor­don said the changes im­ple­ment­ed un­der US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump have trans­formed the way au­thor­i­ties com­bat or­gan­ised crime.

He ex­plained that the des­ig­na­tions have en­abled pros­e­cu­tors to pur­sue high-rank­ing mem­bers of the Sinaloa Car­tel and oth­er crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions us­ing pow­er­ful new le­gal tools.

“One of the very first things Pres­i­dent Trump did in 2025 was des­ig­nate the Mex­i­can car­tels like Sinaloa and CJNG as for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions,” Gor­don ex­plained.

“That al­lowed us to pur­sue nar­co-ter­ror­ism charges where de­fen­dants can face a max­i­mum sen­tence of life in prison.”

He said the des­ig­na­tions stem from ex­ec­u­tive ac­tions tak­en dur­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s sec­ond term and sub­se­quent ac­tions by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, adding that the move ef­fec­tive­ly treats car­tel ac­tiv­i­ty as a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat rather than sole­ly a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.

Car­tels and ter­ror­ism

in Caribbean

Un­der US law, or­gan­i­sa­tions can be des­ig­nat­ed as For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tions if they en­gage in ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty, pos­sess the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to con­duct at­tacks and threat­en US na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests.

The des­ig­na­tion makes it il­le­gal to pro­vide ma­te­r­i­al sup­port to such groups and per­mits the freez­ing of as­sets con­nect­ed to their op­er­a­tions.

In Ju­ly last year, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der drew at­ten­tion to Tren de Aragua, a crim­i­nal net­work that orig­i­nat­ed in Venezue­lan pris­ons be­fore ex­pand­ing across South Amer­i­ca and in­to parts of the Caribbean. Back then, the High Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go ruled to of­fi­cial­ly des­ig­nate the Venezue­lan crim­i­nal group Tren de Aragua as a ter­ror­ist en­ti­ty. This de­ci­sion fol­lows an ap­pli­ca­tion filed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and was ground­ed in Sec­tion 22B of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act, Chap. 12:07, as well as the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 1373.

The court’s or­der of­fi­cial­ly pro­hib­it­ed all per­sons and en­ti­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go from en­gag­ing in any deal­ings with Tren de Aragua.

It al­so man­dates the freez­ing of all prop­er­ty owned or con­trolled—whether di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly—by the group, in­clud­ing as­sets de­rived from its fi­nan­cial re­sources or oth­er forms of sup­port.

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials have al­so iden­ti­fied the group as a grow­ing threat be­cause of its al­leged in­volve­ment in hu­man smug­gling, ex­tor­tion, nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and vi­o­lent crime.

New weapon for Mex­i­can car­tels: Ex­pul­sions

While ex­tra­di­tion to the US has been an op­tion for years, Gor­don says the most sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the US an­ti-car­tel strat­e­gy is the in­creas­ing use of what Amer­i­can pros­e­cu­tors call “ex­pul­sions.”

Un­like tra­di­tion­al ex­tra­di­tions, which can take years to com­plete through for­eign courts, ex­pul­sions al­low for­eign gov­ern­ments to re­move sus­pects rapid­ly and hand them di­rect­ly to US au­thor­i­ties.

Gor­don de­scribed the dif­fer­ence as dra­mat­ic.

“Ex­tra­di­tions could take five years, six years,” he said.

“We have de­fen­dants we’re ex­tra­dit­ing now who were in­dict­ed six, sev­en, eight years ago. That’s not un­usu­al.”

Ex­pul­sions, how­ev­er, op­er­ate on an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent time­line.

“They’ve on­ly hap­pened un­der Pres­i­dent Trump’s sec­ond term specif­i­cal­ly with re­gard to Mex­i­co,” Gor­don ex­plained.

The process re­lies on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty laws that per­mit for­eign gov­ern­ments to re­move in­di­vid­u­als deemed se­cu­ri­ty threats and trans­fer them di­rect­ly in­to US cus­tody.

The re­sult is a dra­mat­i­cal­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed sys­tem for bring­ing car­tel lead­ers be­fore Amer­i­can courts.

One ex­am­ple cit­ed by Gor­don in­volved a Sinaloa Car­tel fig­ure known as Sag­i­tario, who pros­e­cu­tors al­lege was re­spon­si­ble for the largest fen­tanyl seizure in his­to­ry.

“He was ar­rest­ed in Mex­i­co on De­cem­ber 31,” Gor­don said.

“Twen­ty days lat­er, he was ex­pelled in­to the Unit­ed States.”

For pros­e­cu­tors, such time­lines would have been near­ly im­pos­si­ble un­der con­ven­tion­al ex­tra­di­tion pro­ce­dures.

The strat­e­gy is close­ly tied to the US cam­paign against fen­tanyl, a syn­thet­ic opi­oid that Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties say con­tin­ues to dri­ve over­dose deaths. Dur­ing the tour, jour­nal­ists saw first­hand the im­pact of fen­tanyl with peo­ple hunched down on the streets, an­oth­er ly­ing in a shop­ping cart and youths bat­tling ad­dic­tions and home­less­ness.

Gor­don de­scribed fen­tanyl as one of the most dan­ger­ous nar­cotics en­coun­tered by law en­force­ment.

“One of the sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems with fen­tanyl is that if you don’t have a tol­er­ance for fen­tanyl, that of­ten leads to fa­tal­i­ty,” he said.

“That’s when we lose kids. That’s when we lose recre­ation­al drug users be­cause they have no tol­er­ance for this ex­treme­ly pow­er­ful drug.”

Ac­cord­ing to the US De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, of­fi­cers from US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion have seized enough fen­tanyl along the south­west bor­der dur­ing Fis­cal Year 2026 to rep­re­sent more than 100 mil­lion po­ten­tial­ly lethal dos­es.

Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties al­so re­port­ed seiz­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 152,000 pounds of metham­phet­a­mine and more than 28,000 pounds of co­caine dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.

“Now that our bor­der is se­cure, it’s hard­er than ever for car­tels, gangs and oth­er drug traf­fick­ers to bring their poi­son in­to our coun­try,” act­ing As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Lau­ren Bis said in a state­ment.

Caribbean im­pli­ca­tions

Hu­man traf­fick­ing re­searcher Dr Cleophas Jus­tine Pierre, since 2020, has been call­ing for the fo­cus to shift pri­mar­i­ly on traf­fick­ers rather than vic­tims.

He said the key to dis­man­tling hu­man traf­fick­ing net­works is dis­rupt­ing those who or­gan­ise and prof­it from the trade. Dr Pierre said there are far few­er traf­fick­ers than vic­tims and iden­ti­fied nine ways to dis­rupt traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, with his re­search con­cen­trat­ing on un­der­stand­ing traf­fick­ers’ op­er­a­tions, re­cruit­ment meth­ods and busi­ness mod­els.

Dr Pierre said hu­man traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean is a peo­ple-dri­ven busi­ness that re­lies heav­i­ly on the in­ter­net, so­cial me­dia, mo­bile phones and on­line plat­forms. He not­ed that traf­fick­ers of­ten op­er­ate through fam­i­ly and close so­cial net­works, fre­quent­ly have no crim­i­nal records and com­mon­ly lure vic­tims with promis­es of em­ploy­ment, love or a bet­ter life. His re­search found that traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in the re­gion are large­ly linked to sex traf­fick­ing, forced labour, drugs and arms, with trans­porta­tion oc­cur­ring main­ly by sea and land. He said in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing on traf­fick­ers’ on­line ac­tiv­i­ties, com­bined with law en­force­ment in­ter­ven­tion and spe­cialised train­ing in dis­rup­tive man­age­ment tech­niques, is crit­i­cal to break­ing up these crim­i­nal net­works and re­duc­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing across the Caribbean. He al­so said hu­man traf­fick­ing re­mains one of the re­gion’s most per­sis­tent chal­lenges.

The Caribbean’s ge­o­graph­ic po­si­tion be­tween South Amer­i­ca and North Amer­i­ca has made it a tran­sit point for mi­grants, smug­glers and traf­fick­ing net­works for decades.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Mi­gra­tion, ap­prox­i­mate­ly five mil­lion Venezue­lans have left the coun­try amid pro­longed po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty.

Re­searchers have iden­ti­fied the Venezue­lan states of Su­cre and Delta Amacuro—both lo­cat­ed across the Gulf of Paria from Trinidad and To­ba­go—as key points in traf­fick­ing routes.

Stud­ies have sug­gest­ed that traf­fick­ers re­cruit vul­ner­a­ble mi­grants, in­clud­ing teenage girls, be­fore mov­ing them through coastal com­mu­ni­ties and on­ward to des­ti­na­tions in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Against that back­drop, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has em­braced clos­er co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton.

Her ad­min­is­tra­tion re­cent­ly joined re­gion­al lead­ers in sup­port­ing a US-led counter-car­tel ini­tia­tive aimed at strength­en­ing in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, sur­veil­lance and law en­force­ment co­op­er­a­tion through­out the Caribbean.

The part­ner­ship in­cludes col­lab­o­ra­tion on radar sys­tems, the Ad­vanced Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem, foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tions and mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so sup­port­ed the de­ploy­ment of US mil­i­tary as­sets in re­gion­al an­ti-traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions, ar­gu­ing that heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions re­quire an equal­ly ro­bust re­sponse.

She has re­peat­ed­ly main­tained that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have noth­ing to fear from the in­creased co­op­er­a­tion and that the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive is pro­tect­ing fam­i­lies from transna­tion­al crim­i­nal groups.