(Reuters) - The United States on Friday designated Haiti's powerful Viv Ansanm gang alliance, whose members have taken control of almost all the capital Port-au-Prince and spread to surrounding areas, a "transnational terrorist group".
The U.S. Treasury Department also applied the designation to the Gran Grif gang, which in October took responsibility for a shocking massacre of at least 115 people in the agricultural town of Pont-Sonde.
"They are a direct threat to U.S. national security interests in our region," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, adding that providing material support or resources to the gangs could lead to "criminal charges and inadmissibility or removal from the United States."
The gang conflict in Haiti has been met with little international response, while neighboring countries, including the U.S., have continued to deport migrants back to the Caribbean nation despite United Nations pleas not to due to humanitarian concerns.
Over 1 million people have been displaced by the conflict, and tens of thousands more in recent weeks, as the violence has spread to central Haiti, forcing more health facilities to shut their doors and pushing more people into severe food insecurity.
Frozen U.S. funding for security efforts and the dismantling of the U.S. agency for International Development, as well as other cuts, also complicate the situation.
The latest designations come after the U.S. in February designated Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang, alongside a number of other organized crime groups across Latin America including Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, as global terrorist organizations.
The U.S. government later invoked a rarely used wartime act to designate Tren de Aragua as "alien enemies," resulting in the deportation without due process of many Venezuelans to a controversial prison in El Salvador, which is being paid to hold them.
It was unclear what, if any, impact the terrorist designation would have regarding Haiti.
Armed groups in Haiti have made significant gains in the first part of 2025, as an under-resourced, U.N.-backed security mission has stalled, and along with police has been unable to hold off advances of the heavily-armed and well-funded gangs.
The U.N. has called for tougher measures to prevent guns being trafficked to the Haitian gangs, especially from the U.S., which it said was the major source of illegal firearms in Haiti via ports in Florida.
Luckson Elan, who heads Gran Grif, and Jimmy Cherizier, who acts as spokesman for the Viv Ansanm alliance that is seeking political representation in Haiti, are both subject to U.N. sanctions.
(Reporting by Sarah Morland in Mexico City, Brendan O'Brien in Washington and Ryan Patrick Jones in Ontario; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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