On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, 14 Latin American and Caribbean nations are expected to follow Washington’s lead by designating 25 criminal groups as terrorist organizations, according to U.S. and Latin American officials. The move mirrors President Trump’s earlier designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which he announced during remarks at the General Assembly, calling the cartels "the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere — not good people." The joint statement will be announced amid efforts to intensify the fight against cartels after months of focus on the Iran conflict. The formal mechanism for the designation is the Rio Treaty, a 1947 defense pact among Western Hemisphere nations that treats an attack on one as an attack on all.

The countries involved — Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago — are members of the Shield of the Americas, an alliance formed by the Trump administration. Peru and Paraguay confirmed their participation. Former U.S. officials, including Todd Robinson, former assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement under President Biden, criticized the approach, arguing that criminal organizations should not be labeled as terrorists and that militarized strategies have failed to curb drug flows while risking extrajudicial killings and violations of international law.