The State Department announced on Thursday that the United States is designating Brazil’s two most powerful criminal organizations — Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) — as both Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) and Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
All I can say is that it’s about time. There have been rumors that Marco Rubio would do this for a while now, but he’s finally following through.
“CV and PCC are two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil,” Rubio said today in a statement (I’d add in the whole world, not just Brazil). “Together, they command thousands of members and have orchestrated brutal attacks against Brazilian police officers, public officials, and civilians. Their influence and illicit networks extend far beyond Brazil’s borders, across our region and into our country.”
So, just who are these narco-terrorists? Here’s what I wrote about them earlier this month:
Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) are the two largest and most influential criminal organizations in Brazil, though they operate internationally. Both were born in prisons as self-protection groups in the 1990s, and today, they are some of the biggest drug and arms trafficking organizations in the world. There are tens of thousands of members, and they terrorize Brazilian civilians and have taken over entire towns. From beheadings to bombings and other mass attacks, they use terrorist-style tactics to control territory and instill fear.
Not only have they taken over entire parts of Brazil, but they’ve bled over the borders into countries like Bolivia, Paraguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Chile. They also operate in the United States and parts of Europe and the Middle East, according to the São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Today, they recruit new members in prisons, and these aren’t your average street criminals. They run parallel states inside prisons and in parts of Brazil, often corrupting officials. They massacre their rivals, and they make billions through crimes like trafficking, money laundering, and extortion. They also help fuel the drug crisis in our country, contributing to the cocaine and fentanyl that show up on our streets each year. In Brazil specifically, these groups have even infiltrated legitimate businesses in fields like agriculture, real estate, and construction.
The Donald Trump administration has been using the SDGT and FTO designations quite successfully, almost from day one, to target narco-terrorism and working to dismantle and capture the leaders of Mexican cartels and other regional organized crime groups, like Tren de Aragua and MS-13. The designations prevent anyone in the U.S. from providing resources or support for that group, among other things, which curbs financing, isolates these criminal organizations internationally, and heightens public awareness. As we’ve seen over the past year, once we take the lead on these things, other aligned countries in the Western Hemisphere often follow suit.
It also puts pressure on Brazilian institutions and businesses to stop playing nice with these groups, including the country’s little anti-Trump dictator, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But don’t hold your breath on that one.
What makes the timing of these designations even more interesting is that Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, met with Trump at the White House earlier this week. Trump and the elder Bolsonaro are, of course, good friends, and with presidential elections in Brazil looming in October, the younger Bolsonaro is currently the right-wing candidate leading the polls and the candidate who is most likely able to stop the old socialist Lula from serving a fourth term. Having a like-minded partner in Brazil would be huge for both of our countries.
El presidente Trump recibe a Flavio Bolsonaro, el candidato presidencial de la derecha en la Casa Blanca, dándole un enorme respaldo frente al socialista Lula da Silva. pic.twitter.com/9nFcrXsuCk
— Emmanuel Rincón (@EmmaRincon) May 26, 2026
After their meeting in the Oval Office, Flávio held a press conference stating that he asked Trump personally to designate PCC and CV as terrorist groups. It looks like the president and Rubio listened. The senator and presidential candidate was welcomed warmly upon returning home from the U.S. by the people who are ready to pull their country away from the socialism and organized crime that have plagued it for years, following the lead of other countries in Central and South America in recent months.
Depois do encontro com Donald Trump, nos Estados Unidos, o senador e pré-candidato à presidência da República, Flávio Bolsonaro (@flaviobolsonaro), desembarcou em Brasília e foi recebido por patriotas no aeroporto.
Uma recepção cheia de carinho e esperança, daquelas que mostram… pic.twitter.com/4RLhoNa5h4
— Partido Liberal – PL 22 (@plnacional_) May 28, 2026
By making the designation, Trump and Rubio essentially handed Flávio and Brazil’s opposition some support ahead of the elections. Meanwhile, old Lula refuses to condemn these groups because, well, sovereignty or something. Lula’s party has long refused to take a hardline stance on national security, preferring to shout about imperialism than actually help its own citizens who are living under the threats of these narco-terrorists. There is also the idea that high-profile members of Lula’s “Workers’ Party” are some of the officials who have been corrupted by the PCC and CV, but that’s a story for another day.
But the old socialist Lula isn’t the only person who was against these designations. If you’ll recall, earlier this month, several old socialists in our country House Democrats wrote Rubio a letter, asking him not to make these designations because “such a move would be counterproductive and harmful to U.S.-Brazil relations.”
Here’s more on that from what I wrote earlier this month:
The letter admits that these two groups ‘pose a serious threat to regional security, democratic governance, the environment, and human rights,’ but it also says that the Dems are ‘concerned the Trump Administration’s overuse and weaponization of Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations without meeting the clear statutory threshold for terrorist activity.’
It suggests that instead of designating these groups as FTOs, the U.S. should counter them through ‘border enforcement, financial investigations, and enhanced cooperation with international partners, including the United States and INTERPOL.’
A lot of good that’s done us in the past. As a matter of fact, it was the lack of pressure from previous Democrat presidents that allowed groups like these to metastasize.
I guess they wasted their time, but Democrats seem to waste a lot of time undermining Trump’s foreign policy and watching it happen anyway.
As we’ve seen over the past 15 or 16 months, strength and decisive action works much better than diplomacy and endless concessions to criminal groups and leftist governments, especially here in our hemisphere. These designations are in the best interest of the United States and our allies, like the Bolsonaros, who, with any luck, will take back their country this year and join us in the fight against crime.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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