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On Thursday, the State Department is set to reveal plans to label Brazil’s two most dominant criminal organizations, the Comando Vermelho (Red Command) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Capital Command, or PCC), as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) and Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
This designation will enforce strict sanctions against these gangs and their affiliates, prohibiting them from holding assets in the United States and freezing any existing assets within the country. Moreover, it will become unlawful for U.S. citizens to provide any form of material assistance to them. The State Department emphasized in a statement that both the PCC and Red Command pose a severe security risk, not only to Brazil but also on an international scale, given their involvement in violent drug-related terrorism across South America.
These designations are slated to take effect on June 5.
The State Department noted that these syndicates collectively command numerous members and have been responsible for orchestrating brutal attacks targeting Brazilian law enforcement, government officials, and civilians. Their reach and illegal operations extend well beyond Brazil, impacting the entire region and even the United States.
The State Department further highlighted the Trump Administration’s commitment to using all available measures to shield the nation and uphold national security interests. This includes preventing illicit drugs from infiltrating U.S. streets and disrupting the financial networks that support violent narco-terrorists. They affirmed that this action underscores the administration’s steadfast dedication to dismantling cartels and criminal entities in the region, ensuring the safety of the American public.
The PCC and Red Command are best known for their transnational fundraising crimes, including lucrative drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and building relationships with other known South American criminal syndicates. During prior periods of rivalry, the PCC and Red Command have been behind gruesome prison riots in which inmates have massacred each other in gory ways meant to send a message to the other side. In times of “peace” between the two gangs, they have united to increase illicit activity and pose a threat to the public.
Authorities on the continent have long expressed concerns that both gangs have sought a friendly relationship with the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah. In 2018, Joseph Humire, the current Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Americas Security Affairs, told Congress during a hearing that “proven ties” existed between the PCC and Hezbollah.
Unnamed officials told the Argentine outlet Infobae a year later that both gangs’ decision to form an alliance, following then-President Jair Bolsonaro’s increase in law enforcement activity to contain their influence, could also benefit Hezbollah as it could now safely seek ties to one without angering the other.
Drug traffickers spend their day at a drug den in the outskirts of Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil, Wednesday, September 18, 2024. The First Capital Command (PCC), South America’s largest criminal organization, is expanding into the vast Amazon basin. (Washington Post/Dado Galdieri)
That alliance resulted in widespread violence in Brazil, as the gangs sought to disrupt law enforcement activity against them by engaging in terrorism. Messages spread by gang members in Ceará, Brazil, in 2019 openly stated that gang members were ordered to “set off general terror.”
“We will leave the state in a state of public calamity,” the criminals vowed.
More recently, reports from Brazil indicate that the gangs have expanded their drug trafficking to include legal prescription drugs by organizing widespread armed robberies of pharmacies. The leftist newspaper the New York Times reported last year, amid the current peace between the PCC and Red Command, a surge in robberies targeting supplies of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic occurred followed by their sudden appearance on black markets using mobile phone applications such as WhatsApp.
Despite the chaos they have sown in Brazilian society, leftist politicians have opposed large-scale attempts to curtail their activities, and reports suggest that socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opposed a U.S. terrorist designation for the gangs. In October, following a massive police raid ordered in Rio de Janeiro by conservative Governor Cláudio Castro, leftist politicians accused police, and not the gangs, of disturbing the local peace.
“What has been done to tackle criminal organizations is a bloodbath,” Socialism and Liberty Party Congresswoman Talíria Petrone complained. “For decades, we have been wiping up blood, and families continue to be destroyed by a public security model championed by Governor Cláudio Castro, who is incompetent and cowardly.”
Lula personally visited the White House in early May for an exchange that both sides described as friendly and productive despite past tensions between Trump and Lula. Trump praised Lula as “very dynamic,” and reports indicated the two discussed organized crime in Brazil. Lula and his allies reportedly opposed the terror designation out of concern that the U.S. government could greenlight military action in Brazil to deal with the threat the gangs pose to law-abiding Brazilians.
Shortly after his visit, Lula announced a new federal plan against organized crime.
“Brazil is keen to avoid such designations,” the news agency France 24 reported at the time, referring to terrorist designations, “and in recent weeks has stepped up intelligence sharing with the U.S. to combat arms and drug trafficking.”
The State Department designations will closely follow a visit to the White House by Lula’s strongest competitor in the 2026 presidential election, conservative Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president. Bolsonaro revealed after meeting with Trump that he had requested the U.S. government consider designating the two gangs terrorist groups.
“While Lula came to the White House to lobby on behalf of drug traffickers, I came to do exactly the opposite: to emphatically ask President Trump to designate the PCC and Comando Vermelho as foreign terrorist organizations as soon as possible,” Sen. Bolsonaro told reporters this week. “And they are, indeed, terrorist organizations.”
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