WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Senator Rick Scott sent a letter to President Trump asking his administration to build on his recent action designating the dangerous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and others as terrorists by also designating two additional Venezuelan cartels, Cartel de los Soles and La Direccion General de Contrainteligencia Militar, as foreign terrorist organizations. These criminal gangs, led by brutal, illegitimate Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his deputy Diosdado Cabello Rondón, are known traffickers of deadly drugs in the United States, human rights abusers who fuel terror in our hemisphere, and pose significant threats to U.S. national security.

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have taken significant action to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime accountable by reversing Biden’s appeasement policies and imposing a 25% tariff on any country that purchases Venezuelan oil, further tightening economic pressure on the Maduro regime and its criminal enterprises.

Read the full letter HERE.

Dear President Trump:

Thank you for your continued work to secure our border and stop the flow of deadly drugs and crime into our communities. Immediately upon taking office, your Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, took bold and necessary action to hold the evil Venezuelan regime accountable and to protect American families. This is a welcome change from the past four years of President Biden’s appeasement policies. Your designation of eight Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations is a powerful tool that enables us to handle these threats to our national security effectively. It is important that we continue to evaluate the countless cartels and crime rings that operate within our borders and take the necessary steps to erase their influence throughout America and the hemisphere.

As you continue to take necessary steps to protect our country against threats posed by foreign criminal gangs, I encourage you to designate two additional Venezuelan cartels as foreign terrorist organizations: Cartel de los Soles and La Direccion General de Contrainteligencia Militar (DGCIM) (General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence of the Government of Venezuela). Both Venezuelan cartels are led and operated by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his deputy Diosdado Cabello Rondón, and each poses a significant threat to our national security.

The Cartel de los Soles is used to “flood” communities across the United States with cocaine “and inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users.” Meanwhile, DGCIM, Venezuela’s counterintelligence agency, has repeatedly violated human rights and repressed dissent of Venezuelans, and carried out counterintelligence missions on American soil. DGCIM is responsible for arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings carried out by agents to punish members of the military suspected of disloyalty and civilians accused of conspiring against the Maduro regime. A 2022 UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (FFMV) concluded that DGCIM had committed crimes against humanity and identified 122 cases of DGCIM detainees, 77 of whom were “subjected to torture, sexual violence and/or other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.” In response to these gross human rights violations, the United States has implemented sanctions on DGCIM and its officers.

Under the illegitimate Maduro regime, Venezuela poses a substantial threat to democracies across Latin America, and its state-sanctioned drug trafficking activities undermine our nation’s counternarcotics goals in the region. Designating Cartel de los Soles and DGCIM as foreign terrorist organizations is a necessary step to disrupt their malign influence and protect the American people from the deadly flow of illegal drugs into our communities.

Thank you for your commitment to keeping our communities safe, our border secure, and ensuring that criminals are punished. I look forward to continuing to work together to support democracy in Venezuela and bring an end to Maduro’s dictatorship.

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