WASHINGTON has formally declared Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organisation.
The move strikes at the core of tyrant Nicolás Maduro’s power structure and labels his inner circle as “narco-terrorists”.
By naming Cartel de los Soles an FTO, America is effectively declaring the Venezuelan state – or at least those who run it – a terrorist-backed narco-regime.
For the first time, the US is treating Maduro’s government not just as authoritarian or corrupt, but as a hemispheric security threat.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the cartel – run from inside the Venezuelan estate – has corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary and is headed by Maduro himself.
Calling the network responsible for “terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere” and for trafficking cocaine into the US and Europe, Rubio added: “Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government.”
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The designation takes effect on November 24, tightening the Trump administration’s campaign against the illegitimate regime it says it’s weaponising the state for organised crime.
It comes as the USS General R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, arrived in the Caribbean in the latest show of force after 21 US strikes on alleged drug-running boats, killing 83 people.
The carrier joins a flotilla of nearly a dozen Navy ships and roughly 12,000 troops under Operation Southern Spear – the Trump administration’s sweeping campaign against what it calls “narco-terrorists” in the Western Hemisphere.
President Trump, even while ramping up pressure, signalled the door wasn’t entirely shut.
“We may be having some discussions with Maduro, and we’ll see how that turns out,” he told reporters.
“They would like to talk.”
New ‘options’ available
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth said the terror label hands the military sweeping new authorities.
He told One America News Network: “Well, it brings a whole bunch of new options to the United States.”
Hegseth added the designation gives “more tools to our department to give options to the president to ultimately say our hemisphere will not be controlled by narco-terrorists.”
The defence secretary warned nothing, including strikes inside Venezuela, is ruled out.
“It will not be controlled by cartels. It will not be controlled by what illegitimate regimes try to push toward the American people,” he said.
“If we need to apply that inside our own hemisphere against narco-terrorists who are terrorizing and poisoning the American people, nobody would do it better.”
Hegseth also doubled down on the administration’s view of Maduro, branding him an “illegitimate leader” with a $50 million bounty on his head and a regime tied to transnational gangs including Tren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.
Maduro’s web of sin
Behind the US designation lies decades of evidence pointing to Cartel de los Soles as a state-embedded criminal empire.
It is not a cartel in the traditional sense, but a network within the Venezuelan government itself.
Experts say Maduro doesn’t just tolerate this machinery — he commands it.
Dr César Alvarez of Charles Sturt University told The Sun: “Without a doubt, the leader of Cartel de los Soles is Nicolás Maduro.”
From generals to intelligence chiefs, Venezuela’s top power brokers have long been accused of taxing, protecting and transporting cocaine using military aircraft, diplomatic channels and state institutions.
The network’s name – “Cartel of the Suns” – refers to the sun insignia worn by Venezuelan generals.
The symbolism is no accident as the military forms the cartel’s backbone.
US prosecutors indicted Maduro in 2020, accusing him and senior officials of conspiring with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas to “flood” the United States with cocaine.
A recent guilty plea by former intelligence boss Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal further strengthened allegations that state aircraft ferried drugs while officials armed the FARC.
Alvarez said the network spans Latin America, West Africa, Turkey and Iran, moving billions through laundering hubs and protected trafficking routes.
More than half of all cocaine activity in the region, he said, has Cartel de los Soles’ fingerprints on it.
The US says the Cartel de los Soles works alongside Tren de Aragua, another criminal organisation now also designated a foreign terrorist group.
Born as a small prison gang in 2013–2014, Tren de Aragua exploded into a multinational syndicate spanning Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico.
Its rise was fuelled by Maduro-era impunity: a Tocorón prison compound with bars, pools — even a zoo — where the gang ran its empire in the open.
“People think that it’s relatively a new organisation,” Alvarez said, but its growth was “remarkable,” built on extortion, weapons, smuggling and control of migrant routes.
Experts stress Cartel de los Soles is less a rigid organisation than a patronage web of military bosses, judges and political operators exchanging loyalty and cocaine profits.
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The blurred overlap between state power and organised crime is exactly why, they argue, the network has been so hard to dismantle.
“It speaks volumes about how deeply entrenched corruption and criminality have taken control of the democratic process in Venezuela,” Alvarez said.