The Trump administration on Friday, November 13, put three Guatemalan drug trafficking clans under US terrorism authorities, accusing them of serving as the ground crew that moves cocaine and other drugs north for Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).
The State Department designated Los Lorenzanas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the Los Mendoza and Los Huistas drug trafficking organizations for providing material support to the Mexican cartels, both of which Washington designated as terrorist organizations in February 2025.
What the government documents say
According to Treasury’s press release, Los Mendoza and Los Huistas “control strategic trafficking corridors along the borders with Honduras and Mexico, making them indispensable logistics partners” for the two cartels. Treasury says the groups handle the “receipt, storage, protection, and cross-border movement” of drugs bound for the United States.
Treasury describes Los Mendoza as a family-based organization founded in the 1980s that gives the Sinaloa Cartel access to border crossings, clandestine airstrips, storage sites and “local protection networks” in the departments of San Marcos, Huehuetenango and Petén. It also accuses the group of contract killings and money laundering, and says it built economic interests through “land dispossession, cattle ranching, agricultural businesses, and real estate investments” in Petén, Izabal and the Mexican border region. OFAC’s sanctions list entry places the group in Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.
Los Huistas, active since the 1990s, is described as a link in the cocaine chain from South America through Mexico. Treasury says the group’s “longstanding ties to local businessmen, law enforcement officials, and politicians” gave it influence in northwestern Guatemala and “helped to shield the organization” from law enforcement. Its sanctions list entry gives three Huehuetenango towns: Santa Ana Huista, San Antonio Huista and La Democracia.
“Today’s action exposes the ties between politically influential Guatemalan criminal organizations and Mexican foreign terrorist organizations that facilitate the flow of deadly narcotics into the United States,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement called Los Lorenzanas “one of Guatemala’s most powerful drug trafficking clans,” responsible for “numerous acts of violence against civilians, government officials, and military forces.” It added: “We will not stand by while these foreign terrorist organizations corrupt Guatemala’s institutions.”
What actually changes
Any property of the designated groups in the United States, or held by US persons, is now blocked, along with any company owned 50 percent or more by them. US persons are barred from dealing with them.
The bigger shift is the terrorism label. OFAC’s list entries now carry a “secondary sanctions risk” notice, meaning a foreign bank that knowingly handles a significant transaction for these groups can lose or face strict limits on its US correspondent accounts. An FTO designation also exposes anyone who knowingly provides “material support” to the Lorenzanas to federal terrorism charges. That matters in a region where, as US officials themselves allege, traffickers lean on local businessmen, police and politicians.
One caveat on timing: the State Department notes that FTO designations “go into effect upon publication in the Federal Register.” Right Side News could not confirm publication as of Saturday morning.
Complicating details
Some of this is not new. OFAC first sanctioned Los Huistas under its narcotics authority on March 18, 2022. Friday’s action amended that existing listing to add the terrorism designation. The man US prosecutors accuse of leading Los Huistas, Aler Baldomero Samayoa-Recinos, known as “Chicharra,” was captured in Mexico and extradited from Guatemala to the United States in May 2025, according to Agence France-Presse reporting carried by CBS News. The US Embassy called it “the most important extradition in decades.”
The labels also differ. Rubio’s statement says the administration is “imposing terrorist designations” on all three groups, but only Los Lorenzanas received the FTO label. Los Mendoza and Los Huistas were designated under Executive Order 13224 as SDGTs, a related terrorism status that does not carry the FTO’s criminal material-support provision. Neither release named any individual members or put a dollar figure on assets blocked, so it is not yet clear how much money, if any, sits within US reach. Analysis, not established fact: for clans that operate largely in cash and land inside Guatemala, the secondary-sanctions threat to banks may matter more than any US asset freeze.
Right Side News did not find a public response from Guatemala’s government by Saturday morning.
The politics behind it
The designations land as Guatemala heads toward 2027 general elections, and US officials have been unusually blunt about narco-politics. The Guatemalan newspaper La Hora reported on November 14 that Jorgan Andrews, the US Embassy’s chargé d’affaires, said earlier this month that “drug trafficking and organized crime are direct attacks on Guatemala’s capacity to govern itself” and that cartels “want to buy influence” (Right Side News translation from Spanish).
La Hora also reported that the embassy publicly criticized a lavish fifteenth-birthday celebration for the daughter of Zacapa mayor Karen Xiomara Ovalle Madrid, calling it a “narcoquinceañera.” The embassy pointed to the mayor’s partner, Sergio Fernando Cifuentes Sagastume, who served a US sentence for cocaine trafficking conspiracy, and her brother-in-law Haroldo Waldemar Lorenzana Terraza, alias “Haroldito,” who is wanted by US authorities on drug trafficking charges, with a $5 million reward on offer. “Our tolerance: Zero,” the embassy wrote. The posts, as La Hora reported them, did not accuse the mayor herself of a crime.
The shared Lorenzana surname is notable, but neither the embassy posts as La Hora reported them nor Friday’s US releases explicitly tie “Haroldito” to the newly designated Los Lorenzanas organization. What the episode does show is why Washington framed Friday’s action around political protection, not only trafficking routes. Unconfirmed: whether US officials intend to follow with sanctions or charges against Guatemalan officials who protect these groups. La Hora reports US officials have signaled that they will, but no such action was announced Friday.
Sources
- US Department of the Treasury: Treasury Sanctions Guatemalan Drug Trafficking Organizations Supporting Mexican Narco-Terrorist Cartels (November 13, 2026)
- Office of Foreign Assets Control: Counter Narcotics and Counter Terrorism Designations, sanctions list updates (November 13, 2026)
- US Department of State: Foreign Terrorist Designations of Guatemalan Groups (November 13, 2026)
- La Hora: Estados Unidos y el endurecimiento de advertencias contra la narcopolítica en Guatemala (November 14, 2026)
- Publinews Guatemala: EE. UU. sanciona a Los Mendoza y Los Huistas y designa terrorista a Los Lorenzana (November 13, 2026)
- CBS News / Agence France-Presse: Guatemala extradites suspected drug trafficker “Chicharra” to U.S. (May 9, 2025)
Featured image: The US Treasury Department in Washington. Photo: *rboed* via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
How this article was made: Right Side News researched and drafted this article with the help of AI tools. Sources are linked so readers can check them. Spot an error? Tell us in the comments and we will correct it.
