The US indicts a Mexican citizen on terrorism charges for helping cartel

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican citizen will face charges related to providing material support to a terrorist organization for the first time for allegedly conspiring to traffic guns, grenades, drugs and migrants for a drug cartel, U.S. prosecutors said Friday. The cartel was recently designated a foreign terrorist organization.

An indictment alleging the crimes by Maria Del Rosario Navarro Sanchez, a 39-year-old Mexican, was unsealed Friday in the Western district of Texas. It was not immediately clear if Navarro Sanchez had a lawyer.

It came just days after an indictment was unsealed in San Diego against two alleged Mexican drug cartel leaders on narco-terrorism charges.

Navarro Sanchez was arrested by Mexican authorities on May 4, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office. Among the things found with her was a golden AR-15-style assault rifle.

Prosecutors said Navarro Sanchez was assisting the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful and violent organized crime groups. She is alleged to have conspired to give the cartel grenades, buy guns for them, smuggle cash across the border and move drugs.

Two men were also charged in the indictment, though not with providing material support to a terrorist organization.

In February, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was among eight Latin American criminal groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. He had called for the move in an executive order signed in January.

The “foreign terrorist organization” label is unusual because it deploys a terrorist designation normally reserved for groups like al-Qaida or the Islamic State group that use violence for political ends — not for money-focused crime rings such as the Latin American cartels.

The Trump administration argues that the international connections and operations of the groups — including drug trafficking, migrant smuggling and violent pushes to extend their territory — warrant the designation.

The Jalisco cartel was one of six Mexican organized crime groups to receive the designation.

“The arrest of Maria del Rosario Navarro Sanchez should send a clear message to people who wish to align themselves with terrorist groups that they will be sought out and held to the highest extent of the law,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the statement.

Trump has made clear he wants to throw everything possible at Mexico’s cartels for flooding the U.S. with fentanyl. Mexico’s new administration has shown a willingness to help, pursuing cartel operations and making arrests like that of Navarro Sanchez.