Trump administration weighs military actions against drug cartels
The Trump administration is evaluating plans for using military force against Mexican drug cartels, current and former U.S. officials said, a potentially dramatic escalation for the United States in Latin America.
Discussions have ranged from using Navy destroyers to launch missiles at cartel leaders or infrastructure to partnering more closely with Mexican authorities to target the criminal organizations, a U.S. official familiar with the issue said. Military strikes would be “audacious” and potentially unlikely to get approval from the president, said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
A second U.S. official said that there is no consideration for putting U.S. troops on the ground in Mexico, with administration officials instead favoring drone or naval strikes if action is approved.
Deliberations over stepped-up military options go back to near the beginning of the administration, with a working group established that involves officials from the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, the first U.S. official said. A third person familiar with discussions said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was briefed weeks ago on military options, and it appears that no action is imminent.
The planning follows the administration’s designation of eight cartels as foreign terrorist organizations early this year. On Day One of his presidency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring a national emergency, saying that cartels “present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
The New York Times reported Friday that Trump has signed a “directive” to begin using military force against cartels. The Pentagon referred questions to the White House, which declined to say whether a new authorization has been approved.
“President Trump’s top priority is protecting the homeland, which is why he took the bold step to designate several cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.
Trump has already stepped up surveillance drone flights over Mexico and around the U.S. southern border, where the U.S. military has deployed thousands of troops. The U.S. Navy has also sent warships to conduct additional patrols in coastal waters near Mexico.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Friday said her government opposed any unilateral U.S. military action in her country. “This has nothing to do with Mexican territory,” she said of the reported presidential directive, adding that it only involved domestic U.S. military actions.
“The United States is not sending its military to Mexico,” she told a news conference. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will be no invasion. We’re ruling this out, absolutely.” She noted that she had turned down Trump’s offers to send U.S. soldiers to help her government fight drug cartels.
A former U.S. intelligence official with extensive experience in the region said Trump’s deliberations appear to be part public diplomacy, signaling his intent to keep up pressure on the fentanyl issue. “This seems to be about messaging and telegraphing,” he said.
Trump has made fighting Western Hemisphere cartels that traffic fentanyl and other narcotics a touchstone of his national security policy.
Designating cartels as terrorist organizations “allows us to now target what they’re operating and to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview Thursday with a Catholic cable television network. “We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug dealing organizations.”
The Trump administration has been examining how to use the U.S. military to counter cartel activity for months. In the Pentagon, that has included establishing the Joint Service Interagency Advisory Group, a team in Hegseth’s front office that includes U.S. Special Operations troops and liaisons from other agencies, such as the FBI.
The group is run by Eric Geressy, a retired U.S. soldier who previously served as the top enlisted service member in U.S. Southern Command, which oversees operations in Central and South America. Defense officials have said previously that a core focus of the group has been to counter Mexican drug cartels, two people familiar with the matter said. The group’s work has been coordinated with the Mexican government, a U.S. official told The Post in April.
Military deliberations have included the staffs of both Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, who oversees U.S. operations in North America as head of Northern Command, and Adm. Alvin Holsey, who oversees U.S. forces in Central and South America as head of Southern Command, the first official said.
Some former U.S. officials who served in Latin American have warned that an overly muscular approach involving U.S. troops and weapons could backfire in Mexico, the number one U.S. trading partner, alienating a country that is bruised from a long history of intervention by its northern neighbor.
It is also unclear whether stepped-up U.S. military operations would have much long-term effect on Mexican criminal organizations. That’s because they are no longer a handful of disciplined, vertically structured cartels sending drugs to the United States. Today, there are more than 500 cartels, gangs and mafia-style groups all over the country cooperating in a variety of ways, according to the consulting firm Lantia Intelligence.
The crime groups have become an important part of the Mexican economy, diversifying into extortion, oil theft, illegal logging, mining and even call centers. They are so powerful that they name mayors and enjoy alliances with senior officials in a number of states.
Trump has blasted Mexico for its failure to control the flow of fentanyl. “Narcotics of all kinds are pouring across our borders,” said a White House statement in March, announcing tariffs on Mexico and Canada. In response, Sheinbaum’s government has deployed thousands of troops to its northern border, transferred dozens of top traffickers to the United States and increased cooperation with U.S. antidrug agencies.
Seizures of fentanyl in the United States have actually been falling, a decline that began before Trump took office. In June, the latest data available, agents confiscated 704 pounds of the deadly opioid at the U.S. border, half the amount in the same month in 2024, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
U.S. security officials and private analysts say a number of factors could be behind the drop, including a civil war within the Sinaloa cartel, a crackdown by China on exports of precursor chemicals and an apparent decline in fentanyl use in the United States. Trump’s deployment of U.S. troops to the border also could be prompting some traffickers to hold off on shipments, officials say.
Trump has ordered other U.S. national security agencies to ramp up their focus on narcotics. At the CIA, resources have been diverted to the counternarcotics mission, and the spy agency has expanded a program — begun under the Biden administration — in which Predator drones fly over Mexican territory in search of fentanyl labs and other cartel operations. As far as is known, the drones, which can carry Hellfire missiles, have not been authorized to conduct lethal strikes.
The CIA also is increasing intelligence-sharing with Mexican law enforcement authorities to battle the cartels, officials familiar with the plans said. The Trump administration has ordered spy agencies such as the National Counterterrorism Center and the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping, to increase their focus on foreign cartels.
Republicans in Congress offered no immediate reaction to reports of the Pentagon’s planning. Spokespeople for the GOP-led committees charged with providing oversight of the Defense Department and U.S. foreign policy either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to provide one.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in a statement noted the importance of bipartisan efforts to counter drug cartels, but sounded a note of caution about the use of military force. “[S]igning a secret directive to potentially send U.S. service members into harm’s way — without consulting Congress, notifying the American people, or any legal authority to launch strikes within the sovereign territory of our neighbors — is shortsighted and lawless, and will destroy the critical relationships we need to effectively address this challenge,” he said.
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Sheridan reported from Mexico City. Noah Robertson contributed to this report.