The U.S. Treasury Department is imposing financial sanctions on 54 people it says are associated with powerful Mexican drug cartels.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Treasury Department said it is targeting members of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas — gangs the Treasury Department says are "responsible for much of the current bloodshed in Mexico."

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in Mexico City, where they discussed efforts to halt drug trade violence. (Ariel Gutierrez/Reuters)

The sanctions, under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, ban U.S. citizens from doing business with anyone on the list. The move also allows the Treasury to freeze any U.S. assets held by people on the list.

"The Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas have terrorized innocent people in Tamaulipas and throughout Mexico," Adam Szubin, the director of the Treasury Department's office of foreign assets control, said in a statement.

Szubin said the move to add people tied to the two Mexican gangs to the list should help the Treasury Department's effort to target drug supply networks.

The department said Los Zetas was once considered to be the "enforcement arm" of the Gulf Cartel, but it now operates independently.

Clinton vows to fight trafficking

The announcement comes just a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton travelled to Mexico to discuss the drug trade and violence with Mexican officials.

Suspected Gulf Cartel member Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa is escorted in handcuffs at federal police headquarters in Mexico City in April 2009. (Marco Ugarte/Associated Press)

Clinton pledged to work with Mexican officials to help tackle the drug problem and said the drug cartels responsible for increasing violence in the border region are fighting not just Mexican military and law enforcement forces but also U.S. law enforcement.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police across Mexico over three years in a U.S.-backed campaign to crush brutal cartels battling each other for trafficking and drug-dealing turf.

On Tuesday, jet planes loaded with 450 federal police officers arrived in Ciudad Juarez to bolster a federal force struggling to control drug violence in the border city known as Mexico's murder capital.

More than 2,600 people were killed last year in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across the border from El Paso, Texas. Earlier this month, an American who worked at the consulate and her American husband, as well as a Mexican national employee of the consulate, were gunned down after leaving a children's party.

Tuesday's meetings were focusing on strategies for breaking the power of the drug trafficking organizations, creating a more secure and flexible border, strengthening communities in the border region and building more effective law enforcement institutions.

With files from The Associated Press