As USS Ford Arrives, Rubio Lists Venezuelan Cartel as a Terrorist Group

On Sunday, coinciding with the arrival of the supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department intends to designate Venezuela's Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization - a formal designation under U.S. law that imposes counterterror sanctions on a group.

According to InsightCrime, Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) is less a formal organization than a loose network of cells within Venezuela's military. The name reportedly comes from the sun-shaped epaulette insignia of commanders in the country's national guard. "These groups operate essentially as drug trafficking organizations," writes InsightCrime. "It is not clear how these cells relate to one another, or whether they interact at all."

Organized-crime experts say that Venezuela has a growing and active cocaine-trafficking industry interlinked with Colombian crime groups, which operate across the border. Though this is vigorously denied by Caracas, multiple Venezuelan officials have been implicated in cocaine smuggling over the years, including some who have been sanctioned by the U.S. for trafficking.

The list of smuggling suspects extends up to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro himself, who was indicted in 2020 by a U.S. federal grand jury on charges of cocaine trafficking. The FBI has offered a $50 million bounty for information leading to Maduro's arrest. Other allegations have been substantiated in court: in June 2025, former military intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal Barrios pleaded guilty to trafficking charges in the Southern District of New York.

On Sunday, amidst multiple reports that the administration is debating the scope of a planned naval strike on Venezuelan land targets, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Venezuela's military drug traffickers would be designated as "terrorists."

"[The State Department] intends to designate Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Headed by the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro, the group has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated FTOs as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe," Rubio said.

The secretary did not elaborate further on the nature of the alleged terrorist violence attributed to the Cartel De Los Soles.

An FTO designation has relatively few direct legal consequences outside of the U.S.: it bans giving "material support or resources" to the group, bans the group's members from the United States, and forces banks to freeze the group's assets. In general, it relies upon the cooperation of foreign governments for enforcement abroad; some critics suggest it is largely symbolic in nature, since it gives no authorization for the use of military force on its own.

"Remember that by designating the Cartel of the Suns as a foreign terrorist organization, it allows us to attack them militarily within the framework of U.S. law. Then they can't say they weren't warned," said Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-FL), a longtime opponent of Maduro, in a social media statement Sunday. "It's almost over."