MEXICO CITY — A Mexican citizen will face charges related to providing material support to a terrorist organization for the first time for allegedly conspiring to traffic guns, grenades, drugs and migrants for a drug cartel, U.S. prosecutors said Friday. The cartel was recently designated a foreign terrorist organization.
An indictment alleging the crimes by Maria Del Rosario Navarro Sanchez, a 39-year-old Mexican, was unsealed Friday in the Western district of Texas. It was not immediately clear if Navarro Sanchez had a lawyer.
It came just days after an indictment was unsealed in San Diego against two alleged Mexican drug cartel leaders on narco-terrorism charges.
Navarro Sanchez was arrested by Mexican authorities on May 4, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney General's Office. Among the things found with her was a golden AR-15-style assault rifle.
Prosecutors said Navarro Sanchez was assisting the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful and violent organized crime groups. She is alleged to have conspired to give the cartel grenades, buy guns for them, smuggle cash across the border and move drugs.
Two men were also charged in the indictment, though not with providing material support to a terrorist organization.
In February, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was among eight Latin American criminal groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. He had called for the move in an executive order signed in January.
The ''foreign terrorist organization'' label is unusual because it deploys a terrorist designation normally reserved for groups like al-Qaida or the Islamic State group that use violence for political ends — not for money-focused crime rings such as the Latin American cartels.
