The U.S. is expected to soon designate Brazil’s two largest drug gangs as terrorist organizations, a star prosecutor in the South American country said, a move that is likely to amplify the debate over the best way to counter the growing threat of organized crime.

The label is likely to be applied to the powerful PCC, known for its swift rise from jailhouse roots, said Lincoln Gakiya, a prosecutor with São Paulo’s Gaeco, the state’s organized crime task force. He said the U.S. may also extend the designation to Comando Vermelho, the Rio de Janeiro group associated with a deadly clash with police last month.

Such a move would indicate the Trump administration’s willingness to escalate its actions against drug traffickers beyond its borders. This year, the U.S. military has carried out a series of strikes on vessels in South American waters targeting drug cartels it has identified as “narcoterrorists.”

“From the moment the U.S. makes this classification, they understand that these are organizations that pose a risk to the sovereignty of the U.S.,” Gakiya said in an interview. “They conduct operations outside the country, as they are doing in the Caribbean region, in Venezuela, as they do in other parts of the world.”

A senior U.S. official, who asked not to be identified discussing non-public information, confirmed the Trump administration is likely to apply the designation to the Primeiro Comando Capital, or PCC, as well as the Comando Vermelho, but hasn’t made a final decision.

The State Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this year, the U.S. designated several drug cartels — including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and El Salvador’s MS-13 — as foreign terrorist organizations, a move that expands Washington’s ability to impose sanctions, share intelligence, and deploy additional resources.

“Tren de Aragua is less powerful than the PCC in terms of number of members and financially,” said Gakiya, 58, who has spent the past two decades investigating the rise of the PCC from a São Paulo prison gang to South America’s largest drug cartel.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has pushed back on previous calls from the Trump administration to label the Brazilian criminal organizations as terrorists, on the grounds that they are motivated by money and not ideology. Brazil’s Congress is discussing a bill that proposes classifying criminal groups as terrorist organizations, putting pressure on the president.

Gakiya criticized the Brazilian proposal, saying it would have no bearing on U.S. decisions and would do little to aid Brazil’s own efforts to investigate and dismantle criminal groups. The measure fails to target their financial networks or provide the enforcement tools needed to curb their operations, he said.

Instead, Gakiya said he believes those groups should be classified as mafia-style organizations in Brazil, since their actions are driven by profit rather than religious, political, or ethnic motives, as is typically the case with terrorist groups.

“These criminal groups have the characteristics typical of mafias,” he said. “They seek territorial control, infiltrate state institutions, and corrupt public officials.”

Debate in Brazil over how to fight back against narcotraffickers has swirled in the past week after a brutal police crackdown in Rio left more than 120 dead.

The Oct. 28 operation, overseen by right-wing Rio state Governor Claudio Castro, targeted leaders of the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, which has spread from the city’s hillside favelas across large swaths of Brazil in recent years. Shootouts with heavily-armed police ensued in densely packed Rio neighborhoods, escalating the death toll into triple digits.

While some right-wing elected officials and some public polls have shown support for the police action despite the bloodshed, Gakiya said he considered the raid “unsuccessful.”

“It is unacceptable that we have deaths, even in an area dominated by organized crime,” he said. “No death is welcome, neither of a criminal and even less so of a police officer.”

Gakiya contrasted the Rio clashes with this year’s Operation Hidden Carbon, the largest sting ever against organized crime in Brazil. Without resulting in a single death, the operation took down a money-laundering ring linked to the PCC that scrubbed at least 52 billion reais ($9.6 billion) in illicit profits.

“We need to plan these incursions carefully to avoid any loss of life. Our goal should be to reoccupy and reclaim these territories,” Gakiya said.

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