The CIA aided within the seize of Mexican drug lord El Mencho final week — but it surely was removed from the one mission being undertaken by US forces in Latin America.
Becoming a member of President Donald Trump’s battle on medication and the cartels who manufacture them marks an enormous turnaround for lots of the administrations within the area, which has seen elevated enforcement and co-operation with the US in Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador, specifically.
At some point after a closed-door White Home assembly with President Trump on Feb. 3, left wing Colombian President Gustavo Petro ordered a strike in opposition to narco terrorists in his nation, killing seven members of the Nationwide Liberation Military guerrilla group, which controls pivotal drug-producing areas.
“Colombia has ramped up counter narcotic actions after taking a really completely different method for the primary three years of the Petro administration,” Andres Martinez Fernandez, a Latin America coverage skilled, informed The Publish.
It’s a enormous turnaround from final October, when Trump sanctioned Petro over alleged drug-related points.
Leaders throughout the area are thought to have been spurred into motion, at the very least partly, by the arrest of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro from Caracas in a lightning strike US navy operation in January.
Bolivia’s just lately elected President, Rodrigo Paz, introduced this week the nation has welcomed the DEA again, resuming intelligence sharing, officer coaching, and operational coordination on drug trafficking, ending a 17-year-long diplomatic chilly shoulder with the US.
“The [US] Drug Enforcement Company is in Bolivia,” Inside Minister Marco Oviedo informed native reporters on Feb. 23. “Simply because the DEA is now current, we even have cooperation from European intelligence and police our bodies.”
Paz is a centrist from the Christian Democratic Occasion, who changed the lengthy reign of the leftist Motion for Socialism (MAS) get together.
Beneath their rule, Bolivia’s diplomatic relations with the US turned deeply “poisoned” after ex-President Evo Morales expelled all DEA brokers and the ambassador.
Morales pursued a “coca sure, cocaine no” coverage that legally expanded coca cultivation —the plant used to make cocaine. In consequence, Bolivia turned the world’s third-largest cocaine producer, in line with the United Nations.
“That entire Andean area [of Bolivia] is an space the place there’s fairly a little bit of lawlessness the place we’ve had an excessive amount of concern,” Daniel Gerstein, a retired US Military Colonel who labored in anti-narcotics within the area, informed The Publish.
“Morales poisoned his relationship with Washington. They’re making an attempt to revive diplomatic relations.”
Whereas Bolivian officers have stated no overseas troops on the bottom, that isn’t the case for close by Ecuador.
In December, after unsuccessfully making an attempt to elevate a ban on overseas navy bases, President Daniel Noboa begged the US Air Power for assist in anti-narcotics efforts, framing it as important for a “transnational battle” in opposition to cartels.
Noboa, a center-right Trump ally, informed native information on the time that the operation, “will enable us to determine and dismantle drug trafficking routes, and subdue those that thought they might take over the nation.”
Ecuador, as soon as one in every of Latin America’s most secure international locations, descended into chaos in recent times as a serious cocaine transit hub for Colombian and Peruvian product heading to the US, with highly effective gangs seizing management of prisons, ports, and full neighborhoods.
2025 marked the nation’s deadliest 12 months on report, with 9,000 homicides. In a single gang turf battle final March, 22 folks had been massacred — the worst violence the nation had seen in many years.
Nearly all of medication to movement from South America to the US cross by Mexico. Earlier president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did little to co-operate with the US in busting narco-trafficking and was notoriously straightforward on the cartels who trigger havoc throughout the area.
As just lately as final August, now-President Claudia Scheinbaum saved related insurance policies, resolutely saying she was not working with the US on drug enforcement.
“[Trump] began speaking about we’re going to fly drones over Mexico and take out drug [traffickers]. Scheinbaum made it crystal clear that Mexico had sovereign territory they usually weren’t going to permit a bunch of helicopters or US drones flying over their territory,” stated Gerstein, who additionally labored as an Beneath Secretary at Division of Homeland Safety below President Obama.
However issues have modified within the final six months, culminating with the loss of life of the nation’s most needed cartel chief, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes.
“Mexico, with vital prompting of the US, is taking extra substantial motion on narco trafficking prior to now few months than it did over the previous six years mixed,” Fernandez added.
That mission was directed by Omar Garcia Harfuch, Mexico’s Secretary of Safety, who has been instrumental in encouraging a greater relationship with the US.
In March 2025, Harfuch met with FBI Director Kash Patel in Washington, DC.
The FBI posted on X that the assembly marked a “historic milestone” following the extradition of 29 needed people to the US.
He has obtained coaching from the DEA and on the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va., and is claimed to be utterly on board with President Trump’s purpose to finish the trafficking of fentanyl into the US.
“[We are] increasing and enhancing our trusted partnership with Mexico by military-to-military engagements, operational coordination, intelligence and knowledge sharing,” a rep for the Division of Protection’s Northern Command informed The Publish of the Mexican-led operation which obtained crucial US intelligence assist.
Nonetheless, the FBI refused to touch upon the assembly between Patel and Harfuch, who didn’t reply to requests for an interview.
Since Trump designated cartels as terrorist organizations final 12 months, Mexico has despatched 100 suspected cartel leaders to face justice within the US, principally at Harfuch’s behest.
“President Trump promised to tackle the cartels – and he has delivered by designating these felony entities as Overseas Terrorist Organizations, destroying evil drug boats heading in direction of our nation, arresting narco terrorist Nicolas Maduro, and extra,” White Home spokeswoman Anna Kelly informed The Publish.
“The President will all the time do every little thing in his energy to guard our homeland from brutal terrorists who rape, maim, and kill Americans.”
