Hugo Rodriguez, deputy assistant secretary of state for Central America, said at a Dec. 4 briefing that the United States will “have to work with [Mexico] to find the tools that are going to be appropriate in the context. “What we’re looking to do is put at the service of the Government of Mexico any and all tools we have at our disposal, to cooperate on the shared security challenge that the drug trafficking organizations pose,” Rodriguez told reporters. Efforts to designate the cartels as foreign terrorists are something the United States has been “looking very closely at,” he said.