U.S. designates Ecuador's Los Tiguerones a foreign terrorist organization

The U.S. State Department designated Los Tiguerones, an Ecuador-based gang, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the step during a visit to Quito, where he stood with Foreign Minister Roberto Kury. The legal basis is section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and Executive Order 13224. The FTO listing takes effect on publication in the Federal Register.

The department's statement links the group to narcotrafficking and to attacks on civilians, police and journalists. The exhibit it names is the live takeover of an Ecuadorian television station in 2024, an assault already used in earlier U.S. descriptions of Ecuador's gang war. Rubio wrote that Los Tiguerones help Mexican cartels move drugs and that the proceeds fund attacks. He called the group one more Ecuadorian gang in that chain, after Los Choneros and Los Lobos, which Washington listed earlier.

Designation blocks property of the group that is in the United States or in the hands of U.S. persons and generally bars Americans from dealing with it. Other governments can use the listing in their own cases. It does not, by itself, put U.S. troops in Guayaquil. It does change banks, shippers and anyone on a dollar wire who might have touched the network.

Rubio used the Quito stop to announce money around the listing. He said the administration will ask Congress for $45 million more to work with Ecuador. He said a separate $10 million package will target illegal gold mining, gang recruitment, illicit finance and drug routes on land and water. A 110-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter is being delivered to strengthen Ecuador's maritime patrol. He described Ecuador as the most committed partner in the current campaign against illicit traffic and said elite units were already operating together against groups that had not been prosecuted before.

The visit is part of a three-country swing through Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. The wider policy is the Trump administration's decision to treat selected Latin American gangs as terrorist organizations rather than only as criminal enterprises. U.S. operations against suspected trafficking boats in the region have already killed more than 150 people, according to regional reporting around the trip. Rubio's language in Quito was the same register: "violent, bloodthirsty terrorist organizations."

Ecuador's own emergency is older than the designation. Homicide rates, prison massacres and the 2024 studio raid pulled the country into a category it did not occupy a decade ago. Listing Los Tiguerones beside Los Choneros and Los Lobos tells Quito that Washington will use the terrorism toolkit, including asset freezes, on the same groups Ecuador is fighting in the streets and in the litoral.

What the listing does not settle is the Mexican cartel end of the chain Rubio described, or the gold-mining cash that the $10 million package is meant to touch. Those are longer jobs. The short job is the Federal Register notice, the blocked accounts, and a cutter on Ecuador's coast. Kury now has a U.S. legal tag to wave at banks. Rubio has another FTO on a growing list.

The test is whether the tag changes the group's cash or only its name in American paperwork. Ecuador will measure that in arrests, seized boats and whether the next television studio stays on air.