Trump Directs Military Action Against Cartels Following $50 Million Reward for Venezuela’s Maduro

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

According to the New York Times, President Trump has secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration has deemed terrorist organizations, according to people familiar with the matter.

The decision to bring the American military into the fight is the most aggressive step so far in the administration’s escalating campaign against the cartels. It signals Trump’s continued willingness to use military forces to carry out what has primarily been considered a law enforcement responsibility to curb the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs.

The order provides an official basis for the possibility of direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels.

U.S. military officials have started drawing up options for how the military could go after the groups, the people familiar with the conversations said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations.

But directing the military to crack down on the illicit trade also raises legal issues, including whether it would count as “murder” if U.S. forces acting outside of a congressionally authorized armed conflict were to kill civilians even criminal suspects who pose no imminent threat.

It is unclear what White House, Pentagon and State Department lawyers have said about the new directive or whether the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has produced an authoritative opinion assessing the legal issues.

Already this year Trump has deployed National Guard and active duty troops to the southwest border to choke off the flow of drugs as well as immigrants, and has increased surveillance and drug interdiction efforts.

When he returned to office in January, Trump signed an order directing the State Department to start labeling drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

In February, the State Department designated Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (known as MS-13) and several other groups as foreign terrorist organizations, saying that they constituted “a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime.”

Two weeks ago, the Trump administration added the Venezuelan Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, to a list of specially designated global terrorist groups, asserting that it is headed by President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and other high-ranking officials in his administration.

On Thursday, the Justice and State Departments announced that the United States government is doubling a reward to $50 million  for information leading to the arrest of Mr. Maduro, who has been indicted on drug trafficking charges. The administration again described him as a cartel head, and Attorney General Pam Bondi said he “will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes.”

Maduro's Reward Doubles

The United States government has stepped up its pressure on Nicolás Maduro by placing the Venezuelan leader at the top of its list of most wanted criminals, with a reward of up to $50 million for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction.

Maduro thus surpasses international terrorist leaders and drug traffickers by becoming the most wanted fugitive by US justice, surpassing even figures like Ismael “ El Mayo” Zambada of the Sinaloa Cartel, and "El Mencho" of CJNG for whom a $15 million reward was offered.

According to official information from the State Department and the Department of Justice, Maduro is accused of narcoterrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking in a formal indictment issued in March 2020 that also includes several high-ranking officials of his regime, such as Diosdado Cabello and Tareck El Aissami.

"Maduro used his position of power to facilitate massive cocaine shipments as part of the so-called Cartel of the Suns," the Department of Justice stated at the time. The reward was established by the Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program (TOCRP).

Currently, Maduro Moros appears alongside names such as Ayman al-Zawahiri (former leader of Al Qaeda ), and Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes , “El Mencho” of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), on a priority list that considers these figures to be international threats.

It was reaffirmed that the Trump administration and the US has not recognized Maduro's claim to presidency in Venezuela since 2019.

Mexico's Response

President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said that, to date, the relationship between the Sinaloa Cartel and Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is "unknown." U.S. law enforcement officials revealed the relationship yesterday by doubling the reward to $50 million for anyone who helps arrest the dictator.

Sheinbaum clarified that there is currently no investigation or evidence in Mexico regarding Maduro. "This is the first time we've heard of this. There's no investigation on Mexico's part related to this. Nothing. As we always say: if they have any evidence, let them show it. We have no evidence of this," the president explained.

She also rejected the use of US military forces in her country on Friday, responding to news that President Trump had directed the Pentagon to target drug cartels that the United States considers terrorist organizations.

“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military. We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out,” she said. “It is not part of any agreement, far from it. When it has been brought up, we have always said no.”

Panama As an Example

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush sent more than 20,000 troops into Panama to arrest its strongman leader, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on charges of drug trafficking.

Ahead of the operation, William P. Barr, who then led the Office of Legal Counsel and was the attorney general in Mr. Trump’s first term, wrote a disputed memo saying it was within Mr. Bush’s authority to direct law-enforcement arrests of fugitives overseas without the consent of foreign states. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the Panama action as a “flagrant violation of international law.”

In the 1990s, the U.S. military assisted Colombian and Peruvian antidrug law enforcement activities by sharing information about civilian flights suspected of carrying drugs like radar data and communications intercepts. But after those governments started shooting down such planes, the Clinton administration in 1994 halted the assistance for months.

The Office of Legal Counsel produced an opinion saying that military officers who provided such information while knowing it would be used to summarily shoot down those aircraft could be putting themselves at risk of later prosecution. Congress eventually modified U.S. law to permit such assistance.

And the Navy has long participated in intercepting vessels in international waters that are suspected of smuggling drugs toward the United States. But naval ships typically do so as a law enforcement operation, working under the command of a U.S. Coast Guard officer. Under an 1878 law called the Posse Comitatus Act, it is generally illegal to use the military to perform law enforcement functions.

The U.S. military has also conducted joint antidrug training exercises with other countries, including with Colombian and Mexican troops. The military also provided equipment and aircraft to former Drug Enforcement Administration squads that mentored and deployed with  and sometimes got into firefights alongside local antidrug officers in countries like Honduras.  The program ended in 2017.

But Trump’s new directive appears to envision a different approach, focused on U.S. forces directly capturing or killing people involved in the drug trade.

Labeling the cartels as terrorist groups allows the United States “to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever, to target these groups if we have an opportunity to do it,” Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, said on Thursday in an interview with the Catholic news outlet EWTN. “We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug dealing organizations.”

Sources New York Times, Infobae