In an interview aired on Tuesday, President Donald Trump told media personality Bill O’Reilly that he would designate cartels as terrorists due to their role in both drug and human trafficking.

The president told O’Reilly, “They will be designated … I have been working on that for the last 90 days. You know, designation is not that easy, you have to go through a process, and we are well into that process.”

Once a group is designated as a terrorist organization, a new set of US laws becomes applicable. For any person in the United States, it is now illegal to knowingly offering support for anyone in a designated terrorist group. Any member of said group is also subject to deportation. And any financial institution that becomes aware they have funds connected to the group must block the money and immediately alert the US Treasury Department.

Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Monday that he did not expect the US to make such a move. The proposal followed an ambush in northern Mexico, in which 9 Americans were killed. According to Mexican authorities, the family killed may have fallen victim to mistaken identities, and happened to be amid a drug gang’s confrontation.

The extended family of the deceased, the Lebaron family, said they’d been living in the area for decades, and that there was often conflict with drug traffickers. The victims’ relatives said the killers had to have known who they were targeting.