The U.S. government has taken another step in its fight against Mexican cartels, six of which it has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that it had issued an “expanded Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) to help law enforcement combat the illicit activities and money laundering of Mexico-based cartels and other criminal actors along the southwest border of the United States.”
“The GTO subjects certain money services businesses (MSBs) — which provide financial services outside of a formal bank — to enhanced reporting requirements with FinCEN,” the agency said in a statement.
“This important tool ensures law enforcement has access to critical data and can act quickly as they investigate illicit activity.”
The expanded GTO requires businesses such as money transfer companies (Western Union, MoneyGram, etc) and currency exchange offices to “file Currency Transaction Reports with FinCEN for cash transactions between [US] $1,000 and $10,000 occurring in specific counties and ZIP codes,” FinCEN said.
MSBs in the entirety of 12 counties and in certain ZIP codes in two others are required to comply with the expanded GTO. They are:
- Maricopa County, Pima County, Santa Cruz County and Yuma County in the state of Arizona.
- Bernalillo County, Doña Ana County and San Juan County in the state of New Mexico.
- Cameron County, El Paso County, Hidalgo County, Maverick County and Webb County in the state of Texas.
- Certain ZIP codes in Imperial County in the state of California and San Diego County in California.
Five of the counties — all three in New Mexico and Maricopa County and Pima County in Arizona — were not included in previous GTOs issued by FinCEN. MSBs in those counties have until April 6 to commence the reporting of cash transactions to FinCEN.
FinCEN said that the “renewed and expanded GTO underscores the Trump Administration’s deep concern with the significant risk to the U.S. financial system presented by cartels, drug traffickers, and other criminal actors along the southwest border.”
It said that the requirement of MSBs in the 14 counties to file Currency Transaction Reports with FinCEN “will empower investigators to develop additional leads and is expected to advance prosecutions through increased scrutiny on funds going to areas of concern.”
“Further, this GTO will ensure local, state, and federal law enforcement can deny individuals and entities associated with drug trafficking organizations access to the U.S. financial system,” FinCEN said.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said that President Donald Trump “has directed his Administration to pursue the total elimination of terrorist drug cartels to keep Americans safe.”
“For too long, cartels have abused the U.S. financial system to profit from poisoning Americans with deadly fentanyl. At Treasury, we are expanding our efforts to keep drug money out of the United States and to provide law enforcement with additional information to put these traffickers behind bars,” he said.
Mexicans in the United States commonly use MSBs to send remittances to Mexico. While the vast majority of the tens of billions of dollars in remittances sent to Mexico annually is the product of honest work, it is believed that a small fraction of the total is linked to criminal activities such as drug trafficking.
The Mexican think tank Signos Vitales said in a 2023 report that around 7.5% of the more than US $58 billion in remittances sent to Mexico in 2022 could be linked to drug trafficking.
FinCEN’s issuance of the expanded GTO came almost nine months after the same agency accused three Mexican financial institutions of laundering millions of dollars for drug cartels involved in the trafficking of fentanyl and other narcotics to the U.S.
Those three institutions — the banks CIBanco and Intercam and the brokerage firm Vector — all ceased operations last year, effectively killed off by FinCEN’s accusation and consequent sanctions.
The Trump administration has adopted an aggressive approach to combating drug trafficking organizations in the Western Hemisphere, even attacking alleged drug boats traveling in international waters in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
In February last year, the U.S. government designated six Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), as foreign terrorist organizations and imposed sanctions on many alleged leaders and members of Mexican cartels, as well as businesses linked to those people. At Mexico’s request, it has flown drones over Mexico to monitor cartel activity and hunt for drug labs.
Trump has offered to deploy the U.S. Army to Mexico to combat cartels, but President Claudia Sheinbaum has turned down his offers, saying that her government is willing to collaborate with its U.S. counterpart on security issues, but will never accept any kind of U.S. military action or intervention south of the border.
U.S. intelligence helped Mexican authorities locate CJNG leader Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, who was killed in a military operation in Jalisco on Feb. 22.
With reports from La Jornada
