Early in 2025, shortly after taking office, the Trump administration designated several drug cartels as terrorist organizations. This signaled the administration’s intention to escalate U.S. efforts to fight trafficking beyond the usual efforts of the Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Administration and Border Patrol. It also presaged the use of the military.

Combating narco-trafficking remains the administration’s declared purpose. Implicitly, the decision to escalate U.S. efforts is based on several key points. First, drug abuse in the United States remains at epidemic levels despite decades of efforts to control it. Second, previous efforts to suppress drug smuggling into the U.S. have not been successful. Third, because the cartels smuggling drugs into the U.S. are not merely drug traffickers but large terrorist organizations, they need to be confronted as forcefully as terrorist groups elsewhere. This, effectively, means employing military force.

The administration contends that Venezuela is the country from which much of the illicit boat and air traffic carrying cocaine emanates and that Venezuela’s long-time strong man is really the head of a cartel and “a fugitive from American justice.” On August 7, the administration announced a 50-million-dollar bounty on Venezuela’s long-time strong man, Nicolas Maduro. It is this view of the Venezuelan regime and its leader, in combination with the size and capabilities of the deployed U.S. military in the Caribbean, that suggests the administration’s goals are more ambitious than just striking alleged traffickers on the high seas.

The question then is, how would the Trump administration define regime change? New leadership or something more extensive? If regime change is a goal, how does the administration hope to achieve that result? Would a combination of intimidation, enhanced economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure from the world’s democratic community convince Maduro to abandon power? Can the Venezuelan military, which in 2002 temporarily removed Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chavez, be persuaded to act once again? Or is the U.S. administration contemplating military strikes inside of Venezuela? If so, how extensively? Would a targeted attack of regime leadership result in regime change or would the U.S. need to hit various elements of the military plus drug labs? The scope of any U.S. kinetic actions would likely affect the way Venezuelans – who overwhelmingly rejected Maduro in last year’s presidential election, react. It would also affect how the region and the rest of the world regard the U.S. campaign.

If the U.S. were able to oust Maduro what would follow? There is a legitimate government in waiting. Former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez won last year’s presidential election by a huge margin despite regime efforts to sabotage the democratic opposition. Would anything short of the installation of the democratic opposition be considered an acceptable outcome to Venezuelans or the United States? Would a government of national unity which included some of the Venezuelan dictator’s base and elements of the military be acceptable to the democratic opposition? To the U.S? The Venezuelan military has been deeply compromised by the Maduro regime’s criminal activity and is believed to be complicit at the highest levels in drug trafficking. The Cartel de los Soles is thought to include many high-ranking military personnel. Would the U.S.be prepared to put troops on the ground to prevent criminal elements of the Venezuelan military from regrouping even if current regime leadership were forced out?

Finally, what effect will current U.S. operations in the Caribbean have on U.S. relations with the rest of Western Hemisphere especially if U.S. military strikes Venezuela directly? What effect have U.S. operations already had? The answers to these questions are not all obvious.

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The Trump team has never mentioned regime change as a campaign goal. The size and nature of the deployed U.S. forces, however, make speculation on the U.S. administration’s real intentions inevitable. The number of ships, aircraft, sailors and marines appeared to be substantially greater than required to combat narcotrafficking through the Caribbean and eastern pacific even before the ordered deployment of the U.S.’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford. The messaging from Washington, moreover, focuses squarely on the Venezuelan regime.

What we have been hearing from Washington about operations in the Caribbean is a logical extension of steps taken by the Trump administration prior to the start of current operations. While President Obama first called Venezuela a threat to national security in 2015, it was only earlier this year that the U.S. designated the cartels as terrorist organizations. The designation of the cartels as terrorists was a necessary step to operationalize the shift from a law enforcement effort to a military one.

The new militarized U.S. strategy in the Caribbean has had an effect. Drug trafficking by sea is apparently way down. That said, this new strategy has not diminished trafficking by land nor reduced the flow of deadly fentanyl into the country. It has, on the other hand, generated concern in some countries about the return of American gunboat diplomacy. Domestically, the president’s new approach resonates well in some quarters but has incensed many Democrats in the U.S. Congress and even worried some Republicans. British concern about the legality of the U.S. strikes on the high seas is now so acute that the United Kingdom has ended intelligence sharing on Venezuela. The Trump administration has, however, given no indication that either international concern or congressional criticism will precipitate a change in policy.

President Trump’s change of the U.S strategy for fighting the cartels and maybe for achieving regime change in Venezuela has important implications for U.S. relations with its allies everywhere but especially within the region. The Trump administration has clearly made the Western Hemisphere a national security priority but there are many other vitally important arenas in which U.S. interests are affected by developments in this hemisphere – both positively and negatively.

Accordingly, the administration’s agenda in Latin America must include more than just winning the drug fight and controlling our Southern border. More than 40% of all U.S. manufacturing goods are sold into the Western Hemisphere and the U.S. has a positive trade balance with many countries in the region, including Brazil, Chile, Peru, Panama and others. Millions of American jobs depend on trade with the region. Energy production in the region is also significant; Canada is our largest foreign supplier but there are other key players including Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Trinity and Tobago and, more recently, Guyana. Guyana’s oil production, in fact, is exploding. The country’s GDP grew by over 25% in 2023 and by more than 30% in 2024. On the other hand, China’s influence continues to surge and China is now the largest trading partner for South America in the aggregate. The U.S. clearly needs to do what it can to strengthen the value proposition for the countries of Central and South American to see the U.S. as their commercial partner of choice.

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It is, at this point, not clear what the Trump administration’s end game is in the Caribbean. What is clear is that the U.S. cannot ignore other issues around the region or other views on how challenges should be met. Neither should we naively assume that success in suppressing the trafficking of cocaine out of South America is assured even temporarily, however many go-fast boats the U.S. military sinks. Transit by land, which the Trump administration has indicated it may take on next, is still robust. Demand for illegal drugs is still strong in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has recently made progress in engaging Mexico, especially on combating the Mexican cartels, but how effective joint efforts will be remains to be seen. Relations with Colombia, the source of most of the world’s cocaine, on the other hand, have deteriorated dramatically. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has characterized U.S. attacks on the drug boats as atrocities, called President Trump a criminal and encouraged American military personnel to defy his orders. The U.S., for its part, has decertified Colombia for failing to cooperate fully with U.S. counternarcotics efforts and cancelled Petro’s visa.

The U.S. still has partners in Latin America, especially trade partners, but there is also, always, concern over U.S. unilateralism. Moreover, President Trump’s announcement that he has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to become active in Venezuela inevitably recalls for some an earlier and darker time in U.S. relations with Latin America. That said, criticism of U.S. operations in the region has been surprisingly muted – and some countries have been explicitly supportive.

Still, many in the region have been left wondering where multilateral cooperation, diplomacy, democracy support and human rights, pillars of U.S.-Latin American policy since at least the 1980s, fit in America’s new more muscular policy toward the region. At the same time, most of the region agrees that the cartels are a grievous problem, and recognize that Venezuela is a dictatorship and that it has become an epicenter for a great deal of the most pernicious activity in the region. I expect they are dubious about the likelihood of the U.S. eradicating all drug trafficking from South America because so much of the trafficking is by land. They are also unconvinced that combatting drug trafficking per se is the U.S.’s only goal. They do not wish to see a war in either South or Central America but they are also profoundly tired of living with the consequences of the growing and corrosive power of the cartels.

The Trump administration’s campaign to date has had some success and may have put Russia, China and Iran – Venezuela’s extra-regional allies -- on notice that the U.S. has decided to counter malign activity and actors in the region forcefully. But this is a high stakes game for the U.S. A U.S. escalation to ground operations could catalyze world-wide criticism of the U.S. Success with targeted strikes is not assured. At present, we are left to wrestle with the question of whether the campaign to date is a preamble to even more ambitious operations. And, can what has been accomplished to date be sustained at a time when coca cultivation in source countries like Peru and Colombia is increasing and the head of a cartel – which is how the administration has characterized Maduro – remains in control of the government of Venezuela?

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DEEP DIVE — Eight weeks ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio went to Mexico City, the epicenter of the global illegal drug trade, and declared, “The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”

Since then, the administration’s military counter-drug offensive in Latin America and the Caribbean has destroyed at least 15 small boats and killed at least 61 people – but none of them were drug kingpins or senior, irreplaceable figures in the transnational organized crime cartels that make and move fentanyl and other lethal opioids that have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

“Targeting fast boat operators will not stop major drug trafficking kingpins from sending multi-ton quantities of drugs to our country and around the world,” Michael Chavarria, a former DEA supervisor who spent 26 years investigating drug cartels in Mexico, the Caribbean and the Southwest border, told The Cipher Brief. “The drug trade is the most profitable business in the world, without equal. The minions currently targeted on the high seas will continue risking their lives because kingpins pay them more than they could ever earn pursuing legal options. Now, on the high seas, they’re being extrajudicially murdered, in a campaign that will have no impact on the global drug trade.”

Like other veterans of the DEA, Chavarria suspects that if the boats blown up so far contained contraband, it was likely marijuana or cocaine, a stimulant manufactured in Colombia from coca plants grown in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Many of the small boats plying the Caribbean are believed to be supplying the European market, where cocaine brings double or triple U.S. prices. While hardly benign, cocaine is not considered a major overdose danger, and it has fallen out of fashion among many American drug users, who have increasingly turned to far riskier substances — particularly fentanyl, a synthetic opioid painkiller much stronger than heroin, and the synthetic stimulant methamphetamine. Both are manufactured mostly in Mexico, in cartel “superlabs,” with precursor chemicals imported from China and India.

“I doubt these decisions [to attack small boats] involve input from DEA leadership, who I believe serve the American public as best as resources allow,” Chavarria said. “Instead, let’s focus on the Chinese fentanyl sources responsible for threatening our citizens’ lives. The new deadly triangle is China-Mexico-United States.”

Despite objections from Congress, legal scholars and foreign governments, President Trump has announced he may soon authorize strikes inside Venezuela. Many experts believe his agenda in that country is about forcing President Nicolas Maduro out of office, rather than stopping drugs, because Venezuela is not known for producing massive quantities of illegal drugs. The U.S. government's most authoritative annual intelligence assessments – the Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Threat Assessment and the State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report – characterize Venezuela as a transshipment hub. Maduro himself and a number current and former Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 for conspiring with Colombia’s leftist FARC insurgents to transport cocaine produced in the guerillas’ jungle labs in Colombia.

The problem is in Mexico

The world’s richest, most powerful drug lords are Mexican citizens, with well-armed private armies, dynasties and bases of operations nestled deep in the Mexican countryside. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has absolutely ruled out the idea of American boots on Mexican soil. Will the U.S. defy her wishes by ordering American armed drones or special operations teams into Mexico to conduct unilateral commando raids? So far, Trump and his senior advisors have not signaled that such incursions are imminent – but they’ve never said never. In Ecuador two months ago, Rubio said the administration would continue to target and kill suspected traffickers without their homelands’ consent, if those countries didn’t participate in Trump’s new war on drugs by mounting their own attacks on cartels. “For cooperative governments, there’s no need because those governments are going to help us,” he said. “They’re going to help us find these people and blow them up, if that’s what it takes.”

Mexican security forces have repeatedly tried and failed to arrest El Mencho, real name Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, Mexico’s kingpin of kingpins. Oseguera is the 59-year-old founder and leader of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), Mexico’s, and the world's most successful and feared organized crime enterprise. The CJNG, which emerged from the western state of Michoacán, famed for its avocados, is now a multinational billion-dollar business with a presence in nearly every state in the U.S.and at least 40 countries, according to DEA’s National Drug Threat Assessment. The U.S. has put a $15 million bounty on Oseguera’s head.

“The CJNG is probably the wealthiest criminal group in the world, maybe even more than the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] in Iran,” Paul Craine, formerly DEA’s regional director for Mexico, Central America, and Canada, told The Cipher Brief. “It’s the biggest terrorist organization in the Western hemisphere. The CJNG is now right on the border, which no one ever expected. Plus, they have the U.S. infiltrated with their elements for smuggling guns, drugs and other businesses.”

Reward poster for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of “El Mencho”. (State Department)

In second place is the older, fragmented but still powerful Sinaloa cartel. Sinaloa cartel leaders Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, known as the Chapitos, are sons of the infamous cartel founder Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, now serving time in a U.S. prison. They are credited with creating the fentanyl craze by promoting it in their distribution systems, alongside cocaine, meth and marijuana. The U.S. is offering rewards of $10 million apiece for them.

In an interview with The Cipher Brief, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Tex., who recently led the Congressional task force on cartels to Mexico to confer with Sheinbaum’s senior security officials, said he would not advise Trump to try a unilateral incursion on Mexican soil without that nation’s full agreement and active participation. Such an act would explicitly violate the two nations’ joint agreement signed last month pledging “respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Both nations promised to fight drug trafficking and other crimes “each in our own territory,” Mexican foreign secretary foreign secretary Juan Ramon de la Fuente emphasized.

To dismantle the cartels and destroy their sanctuaries in Mexico, Crenshaw, a former lieutenant commander in the Navy SEALs, and other members of Congress are pushing for a massive joint U.S.-Mexico initiative modeled on the U.S.-Colombian military-intelligence relationship in the 1990s and early 2000s. In those operations, Colombian commandos were the point of the spear, with advisors and trainers from U.S. special operations, the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration working behind the scenes, providing training, communications intercepts, human intelligence, tracking technology, financial analyses and other technical assistance. As a result, in 1993, the joint effort tracked signals from a radio phone wielded by legendary Medellin cartel founder Pablo Escobar to the roof of a dingy building in downtown Medellin. A Colombian military marksman shot him dead. The rest of the Medellin cartel crumbled. By 1995, the Cali cartel had fallen. FARC guerillas soon stepped into the breach by setting up jungle labs and taking over the cocaine manufacturing business. The CIA covertly supplied U.S.-made precision-guided munitions that the Colombians used in a series of air strikes that decimated the FARC leadership. In 2016, surviving FARC guerillas made a peace accord with Bogotá and agreed to demobilize.

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What the fight would look like

Any commando team that tries to take on Mexico’s drug bosses and their large, well-armed paramilitary forces can expect ferocious resistance financed by very deep pockets. CJNG territory covers thousands of square miles in the western Mexican state of Michoacán, where Oseguera was born, and in neighboring Jalisco state. His domain is rugged countryside, dotted with ranches and laced with hidden trails, caves and mines. Oseguera has even built his own hospital, according to DEA intelligence, so he can undergo treatment for chronic kidney disease.

The Chapitos are similarly well-protected in Sinaloa state. Experts warn that a joint Mexican-U.S. special operations assault would raise the specter of possible “blue-on-blue”or “green-on-green” firefights a with corrupt elements of Mexico’s security forces defending the narco leaders. “They travel in hordes of security,” says a senior DEA agent who has investigated them for many years. “And not just hordes of security, but you're talking about a paid-off military that's protecting them, paid-off police protecting them. The corruption is just so rampant, and this is why a lot of these people can't get caught.”

“Whether you call it counterterrorism or counterinsurgency, that is what we're dealing with in Mexico,” Crenshaw told the Cipher Brief. “They use terroristic tactics. They terrorize their own people. They are an insurgency, in the sense that they're integrated into every level of society, from government to their own military, to security, to pop culture… The Mexican military has some very, very elite units that I think would be respected anywhere in the world. But there's not many of them. They need more, and additional training, additional pipelines into those elite units. Basic aircraft, ISR [intelligence surveillance reconnaissance], close air support, things that are largely lacking. When they do go into these very dangerous areas and try to go after some of these dangerous kingpins, they're doing so without the kind of support that U.S. special operations would be used to.”

Violence on the Mexico-United States border continues to rise. Just 10 days into the month, nearly 21 homicides are recorded. On Monday, March 10, seven people are shot and killed in separate incidents. (Photo by David Peinado/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The CJNG’s defenses are considered particularly militarized and formidable. According to current and former U.S. officials who have investigated the cartel, Mencho roams about his domain via four-wheel-drive convoys or small aircraft, always surrounded by large numbers of heavily-armed paramilitary fighters who wear insignia identifying them as FEM, Fuerzas Especiales Mencho or Grupo X, which specializes in fighting rival cartels. Like Osama Bin Laden, he avoids using phones and instead uses messengers.

For a commando team, armed drone or precision-guided munition to find Mencho and his party, precise GPS coordinates would be needed, and they’ll be hard to come by.

“He moves pretty often,” a U.S. expert who has recently assessed the kingpin’s vulnerabilities told The Cipher Brief. “So the intelligence on his location would have to be extremely good. Which it’s not.”

Whether surveillance drones could obtain reliable coordinates on Mencho’s position in real time is questionable. “Where Mencho is hiding they can hear drones coming,” the U.S. expert said. “It’s so quiet out there there’s no noise pollution. They’ve been successfully avoiding SEMAR’s drones for years.” SEMAR is U.S. military shorthand for a Mexican navy/marines special operations unit that has trained with the U.S. Navy SEALs and worked closely with the U.S.

The cartel has its own drone unit, called the Operadores Droneros, complete with badges. Cartel operatives also set up security cameras, like hunting cameras, to detect the presence of outsiders.

“They have a lot of early warning capability,” said Chavarria, who used to run the DEA’s office in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, then ran investigations of the Gulf cartel out of Houston. “I don't think that we have the type of precise intelligence that would allow us to effect an operation. And even if it's available, it's time-sensitive, it's perishable. If you're not there on top of your objective, you're going to miss. And then there's going to be gunfights and a lot of innocent people are going to get killed. Mencho hangs out in cities, he bounces around because he's untouchable. He's got police escorts, he's got state cops and municipal cops protecting him. His men have ringed perimeters of security, where they're communicating with one another on various frequencies that are digitally encrypted. So it's very difficult for the U.S. to crack those encryptions, and obviously for the Mexican security forces as well.”

According to Chavarria and other current and former officials, the CJNG has extensive counter-surveillance capabilities. Cartel security officers, known as sicarios, literally, assassins, issue mobile phones with heavily encrypted voice-over-internet and radio-over-internet apps to hundreds of human lookouts, called halcones, meaning hawks, spies, who are under orders to report any strangers showing up in cartel territory.

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Mexican security forces have been driven back every time they’ve tried to get close to Mencho. Notoriously, on May 1, 2015, a Mexican military helicopter that flew over his convoy in Jalisco state was shot down by the cartel paramilitary force with an Iranian-made rocket-propelled grenade and .50 caliber belt-fed machine gun. Nine Mexican soldiers and federal police died, and others were severely wounded. Rubén Oseguera González, AKA Menchito, Mencho’s California-born son and second-in-command, then 25, was accused of ordering the attack on the helicopter. The Mexican military and police mounted a massive operation to track him to a wealthy suburb of Guadalajara. Menchito was extradited to Los Angeles, prosecuted for violating U.S. drug laws, convicted last September and on March 7, sentenced to life plus 30 years in a U.S. prison.

The U.S. victory was short-lived. Mencho’s stepson Juan Carlos Valencia González, a California-born U.S. citizen who is the son of Oseguera’s wife, Rosalinda González Valencia and has emerged as Mencho’s heir-apparent. A leader in the cartel’s elite commando force, he’s known as R-3. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for him. ( His mother Rosalinda, AKA La Jefa, comes from a powerful cartel dynasty, the Valencias. Her uncle is Armando Valencia, AKA El Maradona, founder of the Milenio Cartel, the predecessor of the CJNG. A major player in her own right, Rosalinda spent time in a Mexican prison for money laundering but was released last February, according to news reports in Mexico.)

Sheinbaum has convinced many in Washington that she is sincere in her determination to break the power of the cartels, especially the CJNG, which has menaced her administration unceasingly.

In 2020, Sheinbaum’s trusted advisor Omar García Harfuch, then Mexico City’s chief of police, narrowly survived a CJNG assasination attempt. Sheinbaum was Mexico City’s mayor at the time. When Sheinbaum became president in October 2024, she named Harfuch national security minister and accelerated military raids on CJNG labs and other sites.

But so far, the cartel has proved stronger. Last March, Mexican soldiers and national guardsmen driving in a convoy near CJNG territory on the border between Jalisco and Michoacán states were ambushed, and six security force officers and three CJNG hitmen were killed. Three days later, security forces in the area were again ambushed, two of their number killed and the rest forced to retreat.

On May 1, exactly 10 years to the day after the helicopter downing, Oseguera staged a flamboyant retribution for the incarceration of his son Menchito. Iván Morales Corrales, a Mexican policeman who survived the crash, badly burned, was decorated as a national hero and testified against Menchito in the U.S. trial in Los Angeles, was gunned down with his wife while driving on a quiet street in a town far from the CJNG’s turf. This was an unmistakable statement that the cartel could reach anyone, anywhere, anytime.

David Cristobal Barraza Sainz, known as Commander "Nitro" within the Sinaloa State Police, was shot and killed after an attack that took place on Pedro Infante Boulevard at around 1:00 p.m in Sinaloa, Mexico on July 15, 2025. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Derek Maltz, who served as DEA administrator until June and before that ran the agency’s elite Special Operations Division for a decade, believes that if the Mexican army fails to mount more operations against the CJNG and other cartel strongholds, the Trump team will seriously consider unilateral operations, despite Sheinbaum’s vocal objections. “If the U.S. government doesn't perceive that Mexico has the will or capabilities to literally take them off the playing field, I wouldn't be surprised that the administration is looking at targeted strikes on the [cartel] leadership,” Maltz told The Cipher Brief. “ I would personally encourage it. The president has made it clear that he's going to place American families first, trying to keep everyone safe and secure. So if it means taking out some kingpins in the narco-terrorist world, I would fully support that.”

As a practical matter, a raid or two wouldn’t solve the problem. Mexico’s cartels, like major corporations, could survive the loss of a few key executives. “Killing Mencho would be significant, but it's not going to take out the organization,” Craine said. “You're going to have to have sustained operations against the whole network.”

A global syndicate of evil

The CJNG has built out a complicated and durable executive structure in recent years as it has gone global and diversified.

“Mencho is expanding around the world,” Maltz told The Cipher Brief. He and his allies “have recognized the threat to their business enterprise with the increased attention by the Trump administration. So they're adjusting strategies, realigning, identifying new partnerships, being strategic in some of their global routes and capitalizing on the market in different areas of the world.” Maltz and other DEA veterans say Mencho has cemented international alliances with organized crime syndicates, from motorcycle gangs in the U.S to the Japanese Yakuza. When the profits to be made from human trafficking dwindled due to the Trump administration’s crackdown on the border, the CJNG developed other robust cash streams, including stealing fuel from the Mexican oil company PEMEX and other energy outlets, extorting avocado farmers, and even smuggling mercury, a pricey, poisonous by-product of gold-mining, according to the DEA and news reports.

“The CJNG is the first international criminal conglomerate,” Craine said. “It’s the first ICC to operate worldwide and to have criminal control of legal commodities and services as well, such as oil, gasoline, minerals, chemicals, timber, government funding, infrastructure and resources, armed forces, weapons, politics, police services, judicial systems, international financial services, and so forth.”

What’s most alarming is the significant CJNG and Sinaloa cartel presence in the U.S.

“What we face today in Southern California is a full-scale infiltration by foreign criminal empires, the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel – paramilitary organizations with global supply chains, corporate level logistics, and battlefield tactics,” Matthew Allen, DEA’s chief of operations, told the Senate Judiciary committee last June.

Allen testified that a few weeks earlier, a DEA team had raided an old warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, a few blocks from the agency’s big Southern California office. Hidden inside, the agents discovered, was a luxurious CJNG safe house with places for cartel operatives to lounge, a pool table, polished floors and, presiding over it all, a floor-to-ceiling mural of El Mencho, depicted in a bulletproof vest emblazoned with the CJNG insignia and Mencho’s personal symbol, a bloody cockfight.

It was, Allen said, “a shrine, not hidden in the jungle or some remote compound but right in the heart of the heart of America’s second-largest city. The message was clear: ‘We are here. We are among you’.”

Image of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación safe house in Los Angeles.(DEA Official)

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EXPERT INTERVIEW — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced today that the U.S. has carried out three additional strikes on four sea vessels, bringing the total number of attacks on boats to 13, resulting in more than 57 deaths. The Secretary said 14 people were killed and one person survived yesterday’s attacks targeting drug traffickers.

The Secretary posted on X that, “The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” warning of more strikes to come. “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

The strikes come amid a major U.S. military buildup in the region, most recently bolstered by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s order last week for the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier and its escorts to deploy from the Mediterranean to Latin America. President Trump says he is also considering military action against land targets in Venezuela, a sentiment echoed recently by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

Experts on the region believe part of the counternarcotics campaign is aimed at pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down. The U.S. has recently suspended diplomatic efforts with Maduro’s government and the Venezuelan president has been directly accused by the U.S. of involvement in drug trafficking. And in a highly unusual move, President Trump publicly announced recently that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela.

Maduro has condemned the U.S. military activity, accusing Washington of “fabricating a new war” while vowing to defend national sovereignty.

The Cipher Brief spoke with former CIA station chief David Fitzgerald, who served in Latin America, at the 2025 Cipher Brief Threat Conference about the implications of the strikes and other forms of pressure on both the cartels and Maduro. Fitzgerald joined the conference live from Panama. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

THE INTERVIEW

Kelly: Dave, you have deep expertise in the region and in understanding the drug cartels. With everything going on in the region right now, what's top of mind for you?

Fitzgerald: Regarding Venezuela specifically, it's an interesting situation and I think President Maduro feels like the pincer movement is coming in on him right now. He's feeling the pressure, no doubt, from the military actions in the Caribbean, and also from some of the declarations by President Trump. He doesn't have the support of his neighboring Latin countries that he would like, specifically Brazil - if you remember back when he was elected during the last time, his main ally in Latin America, President Lula, never recognized the election. So theoretically, none of his counterparts other than the ones from the countries everybody suspected would - Nicaragua, Cuba, and, at the time, Bolivia - had recognized the election and President Maduro as the president elect and now the president.

So he understands very well that if push comes to shove, if there's some type of military action vis-a-vis Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba, even Iran is not going to come to his assistance. He's going to be out on his own and he's going to be very outgunned and outmatched by the U.S. military. [He has a] decrepit air force and a decrepit army. He also claims to have rallied 4 million militia members that are undergoing training to help defend Venezuela.

Kelly: President Trump has openly said that he has authorized covert activity in Venezuela. What does this mean? If you're Maduro, what is that message that you're taking from that? How does it change the situation?

Fitzgerald: I think we're all a little surprised by that announcement, which is very out of character for the IC to have a covert action finding actually being announced by the president of the United States. I guess on one hand he's just circumventing what would eventually happen, and that's having it leaked, which I think has happened to all of the other covert programs. On the other hand, I think it's part of that pressure campaign that Trump is putting on Maduro and I think he's really feeling squeezed. There have been recent media reports that Maduro has offered to provide natural resources to the United States to try to find a way out of the situation by accommodating President Trump by providing oil and some of the other rich resources that Venezuela has. But I think he [Maduro] understands that his plan B is going to get on a plane and go to Cuba, much as President Chavez was back in 2002 when he had a short-lived coup d'état attempt in Caracas. There are not many options for him at this time.

Kelly: This administration has made clear that part of the policy towards Venezuela is applying pressure which includes the targeting of suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela. With your decades of experience understanding what motivates the drug cartels and what doesn't, how do you think these attacks might shift their thinking, if at all? And I also want you to explain to us how the cartels are technology, reportedly, better than most other groups in the world. Is this true?

Fitzgerald: They're very sophisticated and vis-a-vis Venezuela, you actually have kind of a, I hate to use the word state-sponsored, but I will say state-approved cartels working in Venezuela. I don't know if we remember the days of Cartel de los Soles, which in English means the cartel of the generals, and that was so true back in the 90’s. The then head of the National Guard was under indictment [for involvement.] He's still under indictment. He has never left Venezuela since then.

Hugo Carvajal, who was General Carvajal, the head of military intelligence, fled to Spain around 2020-2021 because he had a falling out with Maduro. He was extradited to the U.S. back in ‘23. He pled guilty [to involvement in narcoterrorism and drug trafficking] in June of this year and is going to be sentenced at the end of this month. I know the guy personally, and I remember having these conversations with him and telling him, Hugo, one day this house of cards is going to come crumbling down and there's going to be a price to pay, right? He says, ah, no, no, no, no. And I think it's kind of that same atmosphere in Venezuela right now with the senior military officers. Maduro has done a good job of handling the military in the sense of the stick and the carrot, and they all understand that as long as they're true and loyal to Maduro, they're going to benefit from it, from their illegal activities, either allowing trafficking or corruption to take place or participating in it. So there's going to be more indictments, I think. There's no doubt Carvajal is making a plea with the U.S. attorney right now in order to lower his sentence.

You have that combined with what you see now in Colombia. Trump had called President Petro a narco trafficker and said he's cutting all narcotics assistance to Colombia. That's a blow to him, but it's also a blow to our efforts in the region because Colombia, as everybody knows, has been our strongest ally in this fight, both in the Counter-terrorism fight in the region and also in the counter-narcotics fight. So we're going to watch how this plays out.

Elections in Colombia are in May of next year. All polls indicate Petro really doesn't have a chance. I'm not sure whether this announcement will help him or not. Colombia's not doing well right now. The United Nations just last month announced that they have record cultivation of coca now in Colombia. They're producing more than they ever did even before we started our Plan Colombia back in the 90’s. So it's a worrisome situation.

Kelly: I'm glad you brought up Colombia because I was going to ask you about that.

I’ve also heard recently that the epicenter of the drug problem is in Mexico. Talk to us a little bit about that and about what you have seen work or not work, against drug cartels in Mexico.

Fitzgerald: The question has always been how do you declare victory? Okay, narcotics traffic is going to exist for the rest of time. It always has, right? So the question is how do you define victory over that target? Years back, I had a conversation with [former Colombian] President [Alvaro] Uribe and I said, “we’ve made great strides, a lot of great things have happened. How do you define victory over these trafficking and terrorist groups?” Back then it was the FARC and the ELN where they were a two for one, or both trafficking and terrorist groups.

He looked at me and said victory is when these problems stop being a national security problem, a threat to our national security, and just basically turn into a regular criminal problem. I think he nailed it on the head. In countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, all through Central America, these are national security problems. The corruption that it entails, the penetrations that the traffickers have made through all society. It is a threat to the region and a threat to national security of all of those countries, and indirectly a threat to our national security, especially along the border and especially with some of the violence that comes with it.

In Mexico, I think President [Claudia] Sheinbaum has done a fairly good job. You've seen all the newspaper articles about the ICS (Integrated Country Strategy) participation in Mexico. It has been a successful program, but again, flying under the radar, you really can't broadcast this. Colombia was very effective at taking out the heads of the cartels. Extradition was key. We have extradition with Mexico, but again, you have pockets of immunity within Mexico. The corruption is rampant. How to get past the corruption? Venezuela is that kind of dark hole where you really can't do much. But there has been some success, and I can't take that away from the Mexican services, to a lesser extent, the Colombian services and all through Central America, but we're not where we need to be right now.

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Question from NBC Reporter Dan DeLuce (in the audience): Let's say Maduro does get on a plane and fly to Cuba. What does he leave behind? What are the scenarios you see unfolding? I know it's highly speculative, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Fitzgerald: First of all, he wouldn't be the only one on the plane. He would be joined by his wife, probably half of the general staff and anybody else who could get on that plane. They will all understand that if he goes, they go and that they're going to be left to the hoards to try and figure out their survival. So I think right now that is option B, because militarily, he understands the Russians are not going to come to his assistance. The Chinese look at this as a transactional relationship with Venezuela. They are making money off Venezuela’s oil and the loans they provide. They just want to be paid back. Maduro is pretty weakened right now. Nobody is likely to come to his aid. So I think for him right now, it's a very serious consideration as far as plan B, how to get out of Venezuela and how to get out of Venezuela fast.

Kelly: How do you measure the impact of these strikes against these boats?

Fitzgerald: In two ways. The first impact is the psychological impact, and the second is the actual counter-narcotics effort impact. I think the impact of stopping the drugs from reaching [destinations], whether they're going to San Domingo or Dominican Republic or some other Caribbean island as a transit, that's minimal. The Coast Guard has been doing that for decades. It helps, but in many ways it's a drop in the bucket. The psychological impact, however, is far greater. I doubt there's very few volunteers or crewmen, both from Venezuela and from Colombia, who are happy about getting on some of these fastboats or the submersibles to crew them out to the Caribbean. I think what you're going to see, it's probably already started, is a shift to the Pacific side. This situation is kind of a pendulum and it’s been like this for decades. The US and our allies would focus on the Caribbean. They'd switch to the Pacific. We'd focus on the Pacific. They go back to the Caribbean. They would just change their routes, change their modus operandi of how they traffic drugs.

Kelly: Thank you so much, Dave. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you don't do a lot of interviews like this.

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OPINION / FINE PRINT — “We have asked the Mexican government to also step up their involvement in stopping these cartels and stopping the huge amount of drugs that are coming across. If the Mexican navy saw a group of American fishermen that they thought were suspicious of potentially moving drugs and they moved in to kill the 15 American citizens without contacting you, without going through any normal procedures, would you be okay with that?...What we do in combat there is reciprocity, and we are concerned about what other militaries will do to us because we have opened the door on this.”

The was Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) speaking back on September 18, during a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Derrick M. Anderson to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and Platte B. Moring III to be the Defense Department Inspector General.

Three days earlier, the U.S. had carried out the second of its attacks on speedboats it said were trafficking drugs in the Caribbean that were destined for the U.S. killing three individuals. The first such attack, on September 1, killed 11 occupants.

Because the jobs both Anderson and Moring were up for would involve them dealing with the Trump administration’s new policy of attacking alleged narco-trafficking boats in international waters, Sen. Slotkin and other Senators raised questions at this hearing that are highly relevant today as these deadly Trump administration attacks have continued in the Caribbean and since Tuesday began in the eastern Pacific.

So far, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reported nine such attacks resulting in the deaths of 37 individuals.

As I will explore below, last month, Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) at the close of this hearing made a pledge that remains unfulfilled – in effect to hold oversight hearings on the attacks.

Before that happened, Sen. Slotkin made clear, “I have no problem with these groups being designated foreign terrorist organizations. Fentanyl is killing just as many people, if not more, as any terrorist group we have ever seen. But I do have a problem with the lack of transparency and potential violations of international law.”

The Senator then pointed out, “The U.S. government has a way of interdicting ships. You know this. The U.S. Coast Guard uses patrol boats and helicopters. They are able to shoot out a motor and disable the vehicle, board it, and then indict all those people, grab all those people. Show everyone all the drugs that they have secured.”

As I wrote in my column three days ago, the U.S. Coast Guard announced October 14 that it has seized more than 100,000 pounds of cocaine in the eastern Pacific Ocean since launching Operation Pacific Viper in early August, averaging over 1,600 pounds interdicted daily. These drug seizures, and the apprehension of 86 individuals suspected of narco-trafficking, were the result of 34 interdictions since early August.

I also pointed out in that column, that on the day after the Coast Guard release of the success of Operation Pacific Viper, during an Oval Office press conference President Trump said that Coast Guard interdiction “had been ineffective” for 30 years because “they have faster boats.”

As Sen. Slotkin noted above, and I mentioned in my column, the Coast Guard has helicopter-mounted special long-range rifles that can hit and disable the engines mounted at the rear of narco-trafficker speedboats.

While Trump and Hegseth have publicized videos each time a boat has been blown up, I agree with Sen. Slotkin who at the September 18 hearing said, “I would love it if the Trump administration showed us the full video from that encounter, showed us that these men did not have their hands up, that they were not waving a white flag, that they were not turning around and getting out of there, and then show us the drugs. The President said that there were all kinds of drugs that were in that ship. Show it. Show us the video that he is apparently alluding to.”

Hegseth did show what he said were packages of drugs floating on the water after yesterday’s eastern Pacific action, but then the drugs appeared to have been blown up.

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Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) followed Slotkin and brought up a series of questions he and 24 other Democratic or Independent Senators had sent to the White House on September 10, and had not received answers. In fact, they have not yet received an answer.

The questions are worth reviewing: “Give us the evidence that these boats were carrying drugs. Tell us who was on the boats. Tell us what your legal authority was to take a military strike that had not been authorized by Congress? The question that I really want to know is why did you decide to attack rather than interdict? If you interdict a drug boat you get evidence. You seize the drugs but you also get evidence by having access to people and often it is that evidence that leads you to be able to go after the kingpins and the real, you know, muscle behind these operators.”

Kaine added, “If you attack a boat and destroy it makes an impact, but you do not get the evidence. It may actually be counter-productive in fighting narco trafficking.”

As I noted above, when Chairman Wicker closed the September 18 hearing, he said, “The questions about what happened in the Caribbean [and now eastern Pacific] are going to have to be answered. This committee has congressional oversight responsibility.”

Earlier, Sens. Wicker and Slotkin had an exchange about what might occur at any future oversight hearing.

Chairman Wicker reminded Slotkin that “each witness has answered in the affirmative to this question, ‘do you agree to provide records, documents, electronic communications in a timely manner when requested by this committee, et cetera.’ So that is on the record.”

Sen. Slotkin asked, “Do you understand that as video? Just to clarify for me, Chairman.”

Chairman Wicker responded, “Documents, records. I think each witness has answered in the affirmative there…and they will be obligated to follow that.”

“Great,” Sen. Slotkin said at one point, “I look forward to the video.”

I think we all do.

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OPINION — “Currently, the administration is waging a secret war against a secret list of unnamed groups that they will not tell us about. There have been four lethal strikes against [alleged Venezuelan narco-trafficking] boats in the Caribbean. The administration wrote us [the U.S. Senate] a letter…about what they were doing in September. They said they considered themselves to be in a ‘non-international armed conflict’ -- that means a war -- against a secret list of ‘designated terrorist organizations.’ I received a briefing last week on the administration’s strikes in the Caribbean. During that briefing, Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, from both sides of the aisle, asked a Senate-confirmed official whether the Department of Defense could produce a list of the organizations that are now considered terrorists by the United States. They said they could not provide that list.”

That was Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), speaking on the Senate floor last Wednesday during the debate on a War Powers resolution that would have blocked U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean. It lost 48-to-51.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, gave a clear analysis of the several steps the Trump administration has taken that could eventually lead this country to a situation which, as Slotkin put it, “creates an excuse [for President Trump] to unilaterally use the military inside our cities, similar to the way he used them in the Caribbean.”

Other Senators provided additional information about today’s current extraordinary situation, which I will discuss below, but it was Sen. Slotkin who put it in the clearest context.

First, she established her own credentials, saying, “I am a CIA officer. I am a former Pentagon official. I did three tours in Iraq – armed -- alongside the military. I participated in the targeting of terrorist groups. I actually have no real problem going against [drug] cartels, given what they have done in their inserting drugs in our community and with the death of so many Americans. But as a nation, I think we should have as a basic principle that you can’t have a secret list of terrorist organizations that the American public and, certainly, the U.S. Congress don’t get to even know the names of.”

She referred back to the 2001 Global War on Terror saying it was, “kind of my era,” and spoke about how new foreign terrorist organizations were declared to Congress and then “our intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement would spin up to go after information about that group and prosecute -- you know, target against that group.”

Slotkin went on to explain how the Trump administration had late last month expanded the terrorist threat to include individuals and groups in this country.

Speaking about Trump’s September 22, Executive Order, “Designating Antifa As A Domestic Terrorist Organization,” Slotkin said the administration was “going to, again, make secret lists of ‘terrorist groups’ inside the United States and send the full force of the U.S. Government against those terrorist organizations. They are not telling anyone the name of these organizations, but they are authorizing law enforcement and the intelligence community to double down and come up with that list.”

This is a problem, Sen. Slotkin said, “because the Trump administration in that document [the Executive Order] defined ‘terrorist organization’ or ‘domestic terrorism’ incredibly broadly. It suggests that any group that talks about anti-Christian values, views they don’t like on migration or race, differing views on the role of the family, religion, or morality could all be grounds for labeling an organization ‘domestic terrorists.’’’

In fact, the reference to anti-Christian values appeared in a little-publicized follow-up to the September 22 Executive Order -- a September 25, National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7. An NSPM is a presidential directive that specifies and communicates national security policy to executive departments and agencies.

Citing “the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America,” and signed by Donald J. Trump, NSPM-7 gives directions to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Homeland Security as well as the Attorney General on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”

Building on the assassination of Charlie Kirk and attempts against Trump and others, NSPM-7 unites “this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-fascism,’” or Antifa. NSPM-7 goes on to say, “Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

NSPM-7 gives responsibility to the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices (JTTFs) to “coordinate and supervise a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law.” In addition, JTTFs are to investigate “institutional and individual funders, and officers and employees of organizations, that are responsible for, sponsor, or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in” the above criminal conduct.

In addition, NSPM-7 says that the Attorney General “may recommend that any group or entity whose members are engaged in activities meeting the definition of ‘domestic terrorism’…merits designation as a ‘domestic terrorist organization.’ The Attorney General shall submit a list of any such groups or entities to the President through the Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor [Stephen Miller].”

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In her Senate speech, Sen. Slotkin continued, “If this administration is not telling us who is on their secret designated terrorist list for groups in the Caribbean, they are definitely not going to tell us who is on their list of domestic terrorist organizations.”

Finally, Sen. Slotkin spoke out about her future fear -- that President Trump may claim in some American city “if the violence has gotten to a level of an insurrection, it means that the U.S. military can now be used [under the Insurrection Act] as law enforcement in our cities. It means the U.S. military can raid; they can arrest; they can detain. You can easily see a world where the President of the United States labels protest groups ‘terrorists,’ doesn’t tell anyone, and creates an excuse to unilaterally use the military inside our cities, similar to the way he used them in the Caribbean.”

I agree Trump is headed in that direction, and past and present members of the military must also be aware of what’s going on.

Meanwhile other Senators during last Wednesday’s debate raised other issues needing public consideration.

For example, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said, “There is no question that drug traffickers, criminal gangs, and other criminal enterprises engage in horrific and violent acts. Murder is murder, whether committed by a human trafficker, a drug trafficker, or a member of al Qaeda. But there are fundamental differences in their motivation, which legally distinguishes a drug trafficker from a terrorist. It is common knowledge that a drug trafficker’s purpose is financial enrichment, while the definition of a ‘terrorist’ is a person who uses violence or the threat of violence to instill widespread fear to achieve a political or ideological goal.’’

Schiff raised another point related to the current situation. He said, “Other governments are using the label ‘terrorist’ to defame and criminalize social activists, political opponents, and journalists who engage in peaceful dissent. This is common practice in Iran, Russia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, where dissidents are imprisoned and even executed for being so-called ‘terrorists.’’’

In a challenge to Republicans, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said, “If my [GOP] colleagues, as they have stated, believe we should be at war in the Caribbean or at war with nations in the Americas or with the narco-traffickers, they have had the ability the entire time to bring a resolution before us and have that debate in front of the American public. I have a feeling that debate would produce some positive votes if it were limited enough, but to allow a President to do it by secret, without Congress having the guts to have the debate and vote about whether the war is worthwhile, is contrary to everything this country stands for.”

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Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) raised a broader issue. “The notion that we can bomb our way out of a drug trafficking crisis is not a strategy,” Reed said, “it is wishful thinking. Using the U.S. military to conduct unchecked strikes in the Caribbean risks destabilizing the region, provoking confrontation with neighboring governments, and drawing our forces into yet another open-ended conflict without a clear mission or exit strategy.”

Reed continued, “Conflict in the Caribbean or with Venezuela is entirely avoidable, but the risk that we stumble into war because of one man’s impulsive decision-making has never been higher. Our troops deserve better—much better.”

President Trump has been after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro since 2018, including a failed, White House-driven, 2019 regime-change attempt to restore democracy in that country by replacing Maduro with opposition leader Juan Guaidó. John Bolton, National Security Advisor at the time, said in his book, The Room Where It Happened, that Trump assured Guaidó that he (Trump) would, in Bolton’s words, “pull off Maduro’s overthrow.”

Who knows what Trump is saying privately today about Maduro and planning for Venezuela?

But the Caribbean activities are but a sideshow to what the Trump administration has quietly underway in this country.

Again I refer to Sen. Slotkin’s words on the Senate floor last Wednesday: “The President is looking for an excuse to send the U.S. military into our streets, to deploy the U.S. military against his own people, to prompt confrontation, and to hope that confrontation justifies even more military force and military control. This is a well-worn authoritarian playbook. It is one that quite literally the United States of America was founded on rejecting -- the idea that British soldiers, when they occupied American cities, abused American citizens to the point where Americans turned against them.”

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OPINION — “In the 12-month period ending in October 2024 [Fiscal Year 2024], 84,076 Americans died from a drug overdose, according to the most recent available provisional statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), underscoring the devastating effect these cartels have on our country.

Although these numbers show a 25 percent decline since the same 12-month period last year [Fiscal Year 2023] – when the country lost 112,910 people to drug poisonings – demonstrating positive momentum in the fight against these drugs and the organizations trafficking them, the threat remains grave. The trend is hopeful, however. October 2024 was the eleventh consecutive month in which the CDC reported a reduction, and the current statistics represent the largest 12-month reduction in drug overdose deaths ever recorded.”

The above was excerpted from the 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, an annual report from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which was published May 12, 2025, by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice and the DEA.

I refer to that 84,076 American death-by-drug overdose figure because – although it is far higher than acceptable -- it is much lower than figures used recently by President Trump to justify his recently stepped up U.S. military operations against drug cartels and particularly alleged narco-traffickers off the Venezuelan coast.

Back on September 5, when President Trump was defending the September killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan narco-traffickers, he said, “We’re strong on drugs. We don’t want drugs killing our people. I believe we lost 300,000. You know, they always say 95[,000], 100,000. I believe they’ve been saying that for 20 years. I believe we lost 300,000 people last year.”

On September 15, during an Oval Office meeting, President Trump said of drug cartels, “They killed 300,000 people in our country last year and we're not letting it happen anymore.” Later that same day, at an impromptu airport press conference, President Trump mistakenly said, “the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs, that’s what’s illegal.”

Only President Trump knows why he inflates the number of American drug deaths in this country that his own DEA officials have provided to the public. But to me, it shows he wants to justify this recent tactic of blowing up Venezuelan speedboats on the Caribbean Sea.

The September 2, September 15, and September 19 attacks reportedly have killed 17 individuals without the U.S. military first stopping any of the speedboats to determine whether they are narco-trafficking or not – as they did with a Venezuelan fishing boat on September 13.

However, for the three attacks, President Trump provided video tapes which he said showed the speed boats each being destroyed. In addition, both he and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth said with the first two, there are voice intercept tapes proving drugs were involved and that they were destined for the U.S. “We have recorded proof and evidence,” Trump told reporters on September15, “We know what time they were leaving, when they were leaving, what they had, and all of the other things that you'd like to have.”

But neither those voice tapes nor any other specific evidence has been made public.

In his September 4, letter to Congress, required by the War Powers Act after the September 2 attack, Trump wrote, “I directed these actions consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests abroad and in furtherance of national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to conduct foreign relations.”

Meanwhile, many legal experts, including retired Pentagon lawyers, have questioned the legality under the law of wars, maritime law or human rights conventions for these U.S. attacks. Such attacks also contradict longtime U.S. military practice.

My further concern is that at his September 15, Oval Office exchange with reporters, President Trump mused that “there's no drugs coming by sea, but they do come by land. And you know what? We're telling the cartels right now, we're going to be stopping them, too. When they come by land, we're going to be stopping them the same way we stop the boats.”

The notion that Trump would order such an attack on another country’s land is not far-fetched.

Back in the summer of 2020, during his first term in office, Trump privately asked his then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, about launching missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs, according to Esper’s 2022 memoir A Sacred Oath.

Early last month, both NBC and The New York Times reported that Trump had reportedly sent a secret directive to the Pentagon asking for options to attack Latin American drug cartels after they had been named as terrorist organizations.

Last Friday, The New York Times published a story that said, “Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would hand President Trump sweeping power to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any nation he says has harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.”

That Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill are contemplating legislation to justify what they are already doing shows they recognize some legal authority is needed. However, what’s also missing from much of the current media coverage is what the U.S. had initiated during the Biden administration to counter hemisphere drug cartels.

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Back in February 2025, The New York Times disclosed that the CIA under the Biden administration had, as part of bilateral cooperation with Mexico, begun secret drone flights well into Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs, and that the Trump administration was increasing them.

CIA officers in Mexico passed information collected by the drones to Mexican officials, according to the Times, but the Mexican government was slow to take action against the labs, although the Mexican authorities did use some of the CIA information to make arrests.

During a February 19, 2025, news conference, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum described the CIA drone program as part of Mexico’s longstanding cooperation with U.S. forces. However, on September 10, Reuters published a more extensive story about CIA’s counter-drug activities in Mexico, its reporters having spoken to more than 60 current and former U.S. and Mexican security sources, including former CIA officers and diplomats and military officers from both countries.

With the permission of the Mexican government, Reuters said, the CIA had, in a previously covert, years-old program, individually vetted, trained and equipped two Mexican military units – a Mexican Army group and a special Mexican Navy intelligence outfit. The Army outfit is comprised of hundreds of CIA-trained special forces and, Reuters said, “is seen as the military force in Mexico most capable of nabbing heavily armed drug lords holed up in fortified mountain hideouts.

For example, Reuters reported, “The CIA’s Mexican Army group in January 2023 nabbed Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of the imprisoned cartel kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.’”

More recently, CIA under the Trump administration, has created a new Americas and Counternarcotics Mission Center, Reuters has said, with top counterterrorism officials reassigned to work on Mexican cartels. The agency also has increased its already existent drone surveillance flights south of the border.

However, I join Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius when he questions: “Why has the [U.S.] military been so silent as the Trump administration has pushed the bounds of law by…attacking alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats abroad?”

As I have noted in previous columns, on February 21, Hegseth, at a time when the top Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) had just retired, fired the top Army and Air Force JAGs giving as his only stated reasons that he considered them not “well suited” for the job. Hegseth also said he wanted to avoid “roadblocks to orders that are given by a Commander-in-Chief.”

Ignatius pointed out, “The Trump team has gutted the JAGs — judge advocate generals — who are supposed to advise commanders on the rule of law, including whether presidential orders are legal. Without these independent military lawyers backing them up, commanders have no recourse other than to comply or resign.”

President Trump, who wanted to win a Peace Prize, it seems is now firmly on a war path.

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OPINION — “Extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels that the United States has designated as terrorist organizations have wrought devastating consequences on American communities for decades, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of United States citizens each year and threatening our national security and foreign policy interests both at home and abroad…In the face of the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region [the Western Hemisphere] to address the continuing threat…we have now reached a critical point where we must meet this threat to our citizens and our most vital national interests with United States military force in self-defense. Accordingly, at my direction, on September 2, 2025, United States forces struck a vessel [a Venezuelan speedboat] at a location beyond the territorial seas of any nation that was assessed to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and to be engaged in illicit drug trafficking activities.”

Those are excerpts from a September 4, 2025, letter to Congress from President Trump under the 1973 War Powers Resolution which requires a report within 48 hours after U.S. military forces undertake an action “into the territory, airspace or waters of a foreign nation,” without Congress having previously adopted a declaration of war.

Other requirements of such a letter are the “circumstances necessitating” U.S. armed forces; the “constitutional and legislative authority” for their use, and the “estimated scope and duration of the hostilities.”

I will discuss the first two requirements below, but as to the last, Trump makes clear he sees no end to this self-declared war on drug cartels by saying, “It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that will be necessary. United States forces remain postured to carry out further operations.”

I should note here that back in January 2024, with the presidential campaign getting underway, The New York Times reported that Trump’s political campaign had released a video titled “President Donald J. Trump Declares War on Cartels,” and Trump promised to “deploy all necessary military assets, including the U.S. Navy” to impose a full naval embargo on the cartels and to “designate the major cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”

On January 20, 2025, immediately after his inauguration, Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) that created “a process by which certain international cartels [such as Tren de Aragua (TdA) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13)] and other organizations will be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” The EO said further that TdA and MS-13 “present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency, under IEEPA [International Emergency Economic Powers Act], to deal with those threats.”

Having taken those actions, Trump expanded his anti-drug cartel war to include last month doubling up to $50 million the reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Nicolás Maduro for violating U.S. narcotics laws. Maduro, as head of the Cartel of the Suns, was first indicted on federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine in 2020, during former President Trump's first term. The initial reward was $15 million. It was increased to up to $25 million during the last days of the Biden administration when Maduro assumed a third term as Venezuela’s president despite evidence that he had lost the previous presidential election.

At this time, the U.S. does not recognize Maduro as the rightful president of Venezuela.

It is against that background – Trump’s self-declared war against Western Hemisphere drug cartels and Maduro’s running Venezuela – that the U.S. last month began deploying a Navy force to the Caribbean near Venezuela. By early this month it included three Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers — the USS Sampson, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Gravely — which are designed to counter threats from the air, land, sea and even undersea simultaneously. Both the Sampson and Gravely have a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment to deal with intercepted drug situations, according to Navy releases.

However, by late August, the Pentagon had also deployed an offensive force that appears to have more than halting possible drug shipments in mind.

Arriving in the area was the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, including the USS Iwo Jima equipped with AV-8B Harrier attack aircraft and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,200 Marines. Additionally there were two amphibious transport dock ships, the USS San Antonio and the USS Fort Lauderdale, plus several Navy P-8 surveillance planes and one attack submarine in the region.

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It was with that significant Navy force in the area that on September 2, Trump announced on Truth Social: “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists.” Trump said the strike “occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action.”

The New York Times reported the next day that “a senior U.S. official said a Special Operations aircraft — either an attack helicopter or an MQ-9 Reaper drone — carried out the attack on Tuesday morning against a four-engine speedboat loaded with drugs.”

At a briefing for congressional staffers September 9, Pentagon officials acknowledged that the boat had turned around after spotting a military aircraft, and the boat was headed back toward shore when it was sunk.

Other than these limited details, and the widely-seen Pentagon black-and-white video, neither the White House nor the Pentagon have released additional details on the event.

Exiled Venezuelan journalists reported that the destroyed boat and eight of its dead occupants were from the small Venezuelan fishing village of San Juan de Unare in a poor and crime-ridden section of Venezuela’s northwestern coast. Three of the dead were allegedly from nearby Guiria.

According to Latin American news reports, more than 20 years ago, San Juan de Unare became a transit point for drugs, and back on September 1, not one but three boats set out headed east for Trinidad and Tobago (T and T) [not to the U.S.], a key Caribbean transit hub for the international drug trade. It was normal for boats from San Juan de Unare to travel in flotillas, with the logic that some will manage to reach their destination. In this case, the boat hit was a faster speedboat, equipped with four engines of 200 horsepower each.

One more thing worth noting from the Latin press is that the normal crew for similar drug boats would have been three or four, and for that reason the additional passengers could have been men who were either escaping the Maduro regime or had found jobs in Trinidad and were on round trip rides.

These are elements to consider as we remember the U.S. military killed all 11 speedboat passengers outright, without the normal at sea stoppage and searching for drugs as usually done in such circumstances.

That was the case last Saturday when Venezuelan government announced on Saturday that a U.S. destroyer [the USS Jason Dunham] intercepted, boarded and occupied a Venezuelan tuna fishing vessel for eight hours in the waters of the South American country's Special Economic Zone on Friday.

There are many issues to be dealt with about the September 2 incident and Caribbean military buildup. Last Wednesday, 25 Democratic Senators sent a letter to President Trump telling him, “Classifying a clear law enforcement mission as counterterrorism does not confer legal authority to target and kill civilians.”

In turn, they asked 10 questions starting with: “Please clarify the legal and substantive basis for targeting and killing civilians suspected of being affiliated with a designated entity. Please also provide a copy of all legal assessments conducted by the White House, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, or any other entity prior to the strike.’

Another question was: “As noted above, in your September 4th War Powers Report to Congress, you note the ‘potential for further such actions.’ However, you do not specify in that report, nor have you specified elsewhere, any legal authority to take military action to target and kill civilians, including those suspected of committing crimes. What is your legal authority to conduct lethal military operations against civilians at sea, within Venezuela or within other Latin American countries?”

The Senators asked for answers by September 17. Let’s see if they get any answers at all.

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Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a September 10, interview on the USS Iwo Jima with Fox correspondent Rachel Campos-Duffy said, when asked about this U.S. Caribbean buildup, “We’re going to seek peace through strength. We’re going to put America first. It’s our hemisphere. It’s our homeland, but we are not going to sit back and watch the American people be threatened. We are not going to sit back and watch the American people be poisoned. We’re not going to see people be trafficked, see violent groups exist within our country.”

Hegseth then added, “That’s why you see mass deportations. That’s why you’re seeing criminality being locked down. That’s why our border is being locked down. This [the U.S. military force in the Caribbean] is an extension of that. This is an understanding of exactly how America should project power.”

Although Pentagon officials apparently have not yet shared such details on the September 2 strike with Congress, Hegseth claimed to Campos-Duffy, “I watched the strike live. We knew exactly who it was; exactly what they were doing; exactly where they were going; what they were involved in.”

Hegseth’s words do not replace the need for public disclosure of the facts behind such claims, nor does his rhetoric answer the Democratic Senators’ questions about the constitutional and legal justifications for what’s been going on.

This is all the more true with Trump’s announcement on September 15 that the U.S. military struck another boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. Trump said three people aboard were killed. A video included in Trump’s announcement shows that the boat, which had only two engines, was not moving when it was blown up. This strike further adds to the questions surrounding this issue.

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Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

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