Cecília Dias
U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies and speeches underscore a tendency to designate criminal organizations as terrorist groups, and this raises both conceptual and practical questions about its implications (U.S. Department of State, 2025b; CNN Brazil, 2025). Mexico, Venezuela, and El Salvador have experienced this at the beginning of the year, with the issuance of a presidential order signaling this further tendency against “narcoterrorism” targeting cartels (The White House, 2025a), and currently, Brazilian syndicates — Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) — are under Trump’s crosshairs.
Although Latin America is notably vulnerable to Trump’s unilateral and coercive agenda — as analyzed by Dias (2025) — the practical effect of labeling criminal groups as terrorists goes beyond mere classification. It heightens hemispheric insecurity and paves the way for broader sanctions and military interventions, as seen escalating in Venezuela. In this sense, this analysis synthesizes the conceptual conflict between organized crime and terrorism and examines the implications of potentially designating the CV and PCC as terrorist organizations. Before an increasingly authoritarian U.S. administration, Washington’s concerns lie less with semantics than with exerting maximum pressure on security threats.
Between crime and terror…
What distinguishes a terrorist group from an organized crime syndicate hinges on operational characteristics and political interests. In academia, definitions remain contested, but in broad terms, organized crime refers to structurally organized groups focused on profit from illicit activities, while terrorism denotes geographically dispersed violence aimed at political or ideological objectives, by state or non-state actors (Polleto, [n.d.]; Vaz, [n.d.]; Hoffman, 2017).
Internationally, the United Nations (UN) has no single definition of terrorism. Over the past century, however, the UN has produced various universal conventions regarding the protection and fight against terrorism that have shaped today’s international understanding — whether signaling its activities, whether its financing — but without any binding mechanism. In this sense, the strategy of highlighting terrorism in many resolutions brought attention to Resolution 49/60, labeling ‘activities of a terrorist nature’ as:
Acts intended or financed to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of individuals or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them (United Nations, 1994)
.
This definition captures the main aspects of terrorist acts and rests mostly on four key criteria: intent, motivation, targets, and perpetrators, constituting a distinct form of violence (Polleto, [n.d.]). By contrast, organized crime, as defined by the 2000 Palermo Convention, refers to a structured group of three or more persons, existing over a period of time and acting together with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit (UNODC, 2025). These conceptual distinctions illustrate that, despite organized crime having a broader accepted category, terrorism has no universal definition. This heterogeneity implies that each country has to develop tailored domestic legal frameworks to promote effective and non-interventionist international cooperation.
In addition, while both phenomena can occasionally overlap in their tactics or activities, equating them simply because of such similarities fails to recognize their fundamentally different objectives — political and ideological for terrorism and material gain for organized crime. Rhetoric that merges the two into a single label risks distorting their true nature and undermines efforts to craft nuanced, effective enforcement strategies adapted to each context (Polleto, [n.d.]). However, U.S. current foreign policy increasingly seeks to classify Latin American criminal organizations as terrorists, based on a revamped doctrine in the “war against cartels”.
Since President Trump assumed office, U.S. national security policies enabling intervention abroad have become considerably more assertive, increasing the scope for regional political insecurity. Guided by the administration’s “peace through strength” doctrine, there has been a visible expansion in the overseas deployment of U.S. military forces, reinforced by executive orders and measures that further solidify this direction (The White House, 2025a; Al Jazeera, 2025). Notably, procedures targeting organizations like the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua syndicate and Mexican cartels have grown increasingly punitive, with these groups being labeled as terrorist threats to justify extraterritorial military actions and sanctions.
In this context, political and ideological agendas motivate such interventions. The extensive reach of these measures, together with the significant deterrence power wielded by the U.S. in the region, significantly curtails the ability of states to assert their own legal frameworks — fueling debates over the boundaries (and extrapolation) of state sovereignty. The so-called “eradication of cartel threat”, e.g., by the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, near Venezuela is widely perceived as breaching the principles of non-intervention and violating international law, regardless of stated counternarcotics objectives (G1, 2025).
Comparable dynamics are evident in Brazil with the emergence of this categorical misconception, where domestic policies increasingly align with U.S. approaches: it is possible to see a growing tendency to classify major criminal organizations as terrorists, even with their distinctions (Gallas, 2025). Firstly, however, it is necessary to undertake the domestic approaches under organized crime and terrorism in both states.
…a space for instability
In the United States, both international and domestic terrorism are detailed in 18 U.S. Code § 2331 and were significantly expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act after the September 11 terrorist attacks (Legal…, 2025). U.S. law characterizes terrorism as dangerous acts against human life intended to intimidate or coerce civilian populations, or to influence government policy through intimidation, mass destruction, murder, or kidnapping (Cornell Law School, 2021). The act also broadened counterterrorism efforts, enhancing surveillance, intelligence sharing, and “preventive” detention even for individuals beyond its borders.
Furthermore, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the State Department have the mandate to classify certain groups as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) or Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) — or both —, which has increased since Trump took office (U.S. Department of State, 2025a; U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2025). Organized crime falls under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), targeting organizations engaged in extortion, fraud, and other continuing criminal activities through federal proceedings and interagency cooperation (FBI, 2025).
By contrast, Brazil regulates terrorism and organized crime through two main legislative frameworks: the Antiterrorism Law (Law No. 13,260/2016) and the Criminal Organization Law (Law No. 12,850/2013). The Antiterrorism Law, created to prevent attacks on the 2016 Olympics, punishes acts intended to provoke generalized social terror based on ideological, religious, or discriminatory motivation (Brasil, 2013). Meanwhile, the Criminal Organization Law defines organized crime as an association of four or more persons, structured with division of tasks, aiming to obtain advantages through criminal offenses, including transnational crimes, and regulates investigative and punitive procedures (Brasil, 2016).
Within Brazil, the Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) are the largest criminal factions, both originating within prison systems. The CV emerged in the 1970s in Rio de Janeiro’s Cândido Mendes prison to protect inmates during the military dictatorship and later turned to drug trafficking. The PCC was founded in 1993 in São Paulo prisons after the Carandiru massacre, initially to protect prisoners but later evolved into a structured criminal network dominating drug trafficking and other illicit activities. Both factions, which fall within the scope of Brazil’s Criminal Organization Law, have extended their influence nationwide and established hybrid governance in marginalized areas, facilitating their international expansion (FBSP, 2025; UCDP, 2024a; UCDP, 2024b).
Recently, the deadliest police operation in Rio de Janeiro’s history, Contention Operation, occurred in October, aimed to contain the expansion of CV in the Penha and Alemao complexes. Although considered a success for political campaigning, the reality is that such operations serve more to perpetuate a cycle of violence, acting as a temporary fix rather than a solution, further inflating a warlike scenario in public opinion that shapes these actions. In this context, there has been a momentum in legislative proposals to intensify the repression against criminal organizations by officially classifying them as terrorist groups, accompanied by the emerging discourse of “narcoterrorism” (Rodrigues, 2025).
This shift seeks to broaden the legal and security framework to allow for harsher penalties and more aggressive policing strategies. However, equating organized crime with terrorism risks conflating fundamentally distinct phenomena, potentially undermining due process, overstating security threats, and straining Brazil’s democratic institutions. This debate highlights the tension between ensuring public security and preserving civil liberties, a balance that remains contested amid rising violence and political pressures, mainly if the U.S. classifies as such.
If the U.S. designates the PCC and CV as terrorist organizations, Brazil would face complex and multidimensional legal repercussions. International cooperation mechanisms would enable financial sanctions against individuals and companies tied (even indirectly) to these factions, and allow asset freezes under U.S. jurisdiction. The Brazilian financial system would face heightened U.S. compliance pressures, forcing banks to adopt rigorous anti-terror controls to avoid penalties, while Brazilian firms with U.S. ties could face “material support” allegations if linked to these syndicates (U.S. Department of State, 2025a; U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2025).
An SDGT label would freeze all U.S.-jurisdiction assets, impose broad transaction bans, and authorize derivative sanctions affecting support networks, potentially ensnaring Brazilian companies indirectly linked to these factions (CNN Brasil, 2025). A dual FTO/SDGT designation, a common U.S. strategy to maximize legal impact, would create a fundamental legal incompatibility, especially as the pace of legislative proposals increases, and would open the door to potential military interventions.
Nonetheless, highlighting similarities between organized crime and terrorism, while ignoring the fundamental differences, impacts Brazil’s judicial autonomy and diplomatic engagement. In this regard, the Brazilian government maintains that the CV and PCC are criminal entities, not terrorists, and argues any U.S. classification would violate national sovereignty and set a dangerous precedent.
What’s next?
Whether the CV and PCC will ultimately be designated as terrorist groups by the U.S. remains uncertain, but current trends favor such a move. However, its practical consequences highlight the far-reaching legal, financial, and diplomatic challenges Brazil would face under international pressure. A central point in this discussion primarily concerns the differing operational characteristics and political interests that distinguish these groups from traditional terrorist organizations. The advance of legislative proposals seeking to classify such criminal syndicates as terrorist entities raises critical questions about the adequacy of existing legal frameworks and their potential impacts.
It is true that combating organized crime through increasingly repressive means is necessary — but how would classifying them as terrorist groups facilitate this approach, since they are not equivalents?
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