The Trump administration has tapped the Treasury Department to track down and halt the flow of money to foreign drug cartels.

Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Michael Faulkender says the federal agency is choking off the cash flow that powers cartels’ human and drug smuggling operations by designating them as terrorists, he explained to The Daily Wire.

“One of the most important things that the president did upon coming into office was to declare a number of the narco groups terrorist organizations,” Faulkender told The Daily Wire. “What that does is it unleashes additional authorities at Treasury for us to better target some of the financial activities that these cartels are engaging in.”

Faulkender told The Daily Wire that the agency’s moves are cutting into the cartels’ flow of money, disincentivizing their human smuggling and drug-running operations.

“It’s one thing to have our partners at [the Department of Homeland Security] work on stopping the flow of people and drugs, but we can also use our financial tools to go after the money,” the Treasury official explained. “If the money is not flowing back south, then there’s less of an incentive to bring the drugs and the guns and some of the illicit activity up to the north.”

“Since the president took office, we’ve engaged in five different actions going after nine different entities for a total of 16 individuals,” he noted.

The Treasury Department unveiled sanctions on “two high-ranking members of the Mexico-based Cartel del Noreste,” a foreign terrorist organization formerly known as Los Zetas.

Cartel del Noreste “and its leaders have carried out a violent campaign of intimidation, kidnapping, and terrorism, threatening communities on both sides of our southern border,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent charged. “We will continue to cut off the cartels’ ability to obtain the drugs, money, and guns that enable their violent activities.”

That move follows the Treasury Department’s March announcement that it was imposing sanctions on six individuals and seven organizations believed to be laundering money for the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s most notorious criminal organizations and a federally-designated foreign terror organization.

“We leveled sanctions against six individuals and seven entities involved in a money laundering operation, cutting off financing for these evil people,” Bessent said at the time. “Laundered drug money is the lifeblood of the Sinaloa Cartel’s narco-terrorist enterprise, only made possible through trusted financial facilitators like those we have designated today.”

Treasury also hit Brink’s Global Services, which specializes in transporting funds and other valuables for banks and other clients, with a $37 million civil penalty, alleging that the company moved money across the southern border without following anti-money laundering regulations. The company’s violations, the Treasury Department says, exposed “the U.S. financial system to a heightened risk of money laundering, including from narcotics trafficking and other illicit activity.”

Faulkender says the Trump administration isn’t just launching a whole-of-government approach to combat the cartels’ drug and human smuggling, but is also pushing the Mexican government to track and penalize the flow of cartel money.

“The president imposed tariffs on the Mexican government and on products that are coming in from Mexico to elicit participation and cooperation from the Mexican government, and so we are seeing the Mexican government willing to work with us to go after these financial networks that are enriching the cartels,” he told The Daily Wire, adding that the government is “monitoring the money flows, tracking it down, either putting a complete stop to it and, and seizing that money, or at the very least, making it a lot more expensive for them to move that money around and try to deter them from engaging in these kinds of actions.”

WASHINGTON—A group of senior State Department officials will head to France and Ireland this week to push both countries to respect citizens’ rights, The Daily Wire has learned.

The trip is part of a State Department effort to fight “egregious examples of democratic backsliding” and “violations of basic natural rights” in Europe, a senior State Department official shared with The Daily Wire. The initiative, launched by the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, is especially focused on defending freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to privacy.

The countries in question “claim to be bastions of democracy,” the senior State Department official explained, “they’re so-called liberal democracies that preach inclusivity and tolerance and progress, and the reality on the ground just simply shows that isn’t the case.”

In France, the State Department delegation will meet with government officials to discuss the recent arrest of French politician Marine Le Pen. In Ireland, their discussion will focus on concerns that a new European Union law could be used to censor free speech.

Under President Donald Trump, the State Department is working to push American allies to respect the rights of their citizens and the rights of American citizens. Foggy Bottom sees trips like this as opportunities to battle the global political apparatus that has been weaponized against both European and American people, an apparatus that wants to silence individuals who stand up for traditional values like faith, freedom, and family.

As Vice President JD Vance highlighted at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, President Donald Trump’s administration sees real threats facing its allies in Europe “from within” — particularly cases of governments targeting their own citizens and particular forms of political and religious speech. Those targeted are disproportionately Christian, conservative, or nationalist.

“It’s not a coincidence that these kinds of global forces are using similar tactics to those that were used on this side of the Atlantic against President Trump and his supporters over the past eight years,” the State Department official shared.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly emphasized that everything the State Department is doing must be done in the “national interest.” Increasingly, the State Department is noticing that the measures taken by the European Union are not only affecting European citizens, but also affecting American individuals and companies.

“In the spirit of our common culture or common Western heritage, that champions natural rights and free speech, we think we can speak frankly with our European allies about these real concerns,” that official noted. “If we’re not on the same page civilizationally, if we’re not on the same page politically, if we’re not on the same page values-wise, it makes those very important relationships much harder to guarantee.”

In March 2025, French authorities charged Marine Le Pen — a conservative and  presumptive presidential candidate for the “National Rally” — with embezzlement. A court quickly found her guilty, placed her on house arrest, and banned her from seeking elected office for five years.

The State Department is taking her stature as a political leader and the disproportionate speed at which the French government proceeded with the ban into consideration. They find her case “unique and concerning,” The Daily Wire has learned.

In Ireland, the officials will focus on the Digital Services Act, European Union legislation that will impact American companies based in Ireland, particularly technology companies. The legislation ostensibly aims to protect children by moderating online content and harmful practices like child pornography.

But in practice, a State Department official told the Daily Wire, it has been used to target political speech deemed to be hateful or offensive by European governments. American social media companies face heavy fines if they do not conform to the censorship rules.

“It’s obviously being weaponized, for political purposes,” the State Department official said.

State Department officials traveled to the United Kingdom earlier this year, where they met with Livia Tossici-Bolt, a woman prosecuted for holding a sign near a Bournemouth abortion clinic that read: “Here to talk if you want.”

The State Department issued a statement at the time announcing that it was monitoring Tossici-Bolt’s case and that it was important to the United States that the United Kingdom “respect and protect freedom of expression.” Tossici-Bolt was convicted in April and ordered to pay a fine of £20,000, The Guardian reports.

The State Department trip comes amid an ongoing trade war between the United States and European nations. Pressed by The Daily Wire earlier this month as to whether a newly-signed trade deal with the United Kingdom included any assurances from Britain to protect free speech and freedom of religion, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the agreement was solely focused on the economy.