Prop. 317 would call drug cartels terrorists. Critics fear who else it could catch.

Arizona's Proposition 317 would classify drug cartels as terrorist organizations under state law and direct the state's Department of Homeland Security to combat them, an effort led by House Speaker Steve Montenegro after Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed an earlier version in 2023 and the legislature declined to advance a ballot measure in 2024. The push revived after President Trump's 2025 executive order designating cartels as terrorist organizations federally, an order critics note was used to send tattooed immigrants to a Salvadoran prison where they were tortured.

Critics including the ACLU's Darrell Hill and Progress Arizona's Joel Edman say the measure's definition of a drug cartel — any 'ongoing formal or informal association' involved in smuggling or trafficking — is broad enough to label low-level drug offenders, people with substance abuse disorders, or migrants traveling with paid guides as terrorists. They also warn the law's language could be used by a future governor to justify deploying National Guard troops to the border under an 'invasion' theory that legal scholars say has no constitutional basis.

Montenegro, pressed in a February hearing on whether migrants coerced into carrying drugs could be labeled terrorists, said Homeland Security has processes to distinguish them, drawing a line between 'terrorizing people' and 'carrying a backpack.' The ACLU's Hill countered that the state lacks power to declare an invasion regardless of how the measure is worded.

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