SAO PAULO (AP) — The U.S. State Department designated two Brazilian criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations on Thursday.
With Brazil’s presidential election set to take place in October, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro have called for the designation as they target President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s public security policies.
The two gangs — First Command of the Capital, or PCC, and Red Command, or CV — likely have more than 50,000 members combined, according to experts.
Designating criminal cartels in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations is a strategy that Trump’s administration has used as it turns to military activity and other aggressive steps to combat drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, notably carrying out a campaign of deadly boat strikes against those it calls “narcoterrorists” in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
