José Adán Gutiérrez, senior member, MSI² for FinGurú
In August 2025, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump had allegedly signed a secret executive order directing the U.S. military to plan operations against Latin American drug cartels designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) (New York Times, 2025). Simultaneously, the State Department offered a $50 million reward for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accused of leading his country's Cartel of the Suns.
In a context of increasing cartel-related violence and institutional fragility, this article examines how different sectors of Mexican society — government, civil society, businesses, victim groups, and the general public — perceive the possibility of direct military intervention by the United States. It incorporates recent analyses on cartel governance, implications for human rights, and the erosion of state capacity (Gutiérrez, 2025), and broadens the scope to assess reactions from Venezuela, the exile community in Miami, Colombia, and other regions.
The document contrasts the traditional support of the U.S. military in anti-narcotics operations with the operational anti-terrorism leadership envisioned in Trump’s initiative. It raises the inevitable question: Is it time to try something different in the war against drug cartels?
Introduction
The recent actions of President Trump have transformed the U.S. anti-narcotics approach, moving from rhetoric to concrete planning. On August 8, 2025, The New York Times reported that the president signed a secret order authorizing the Pentagon to prepare attack plans against cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) (New York Times, 2025). Concurrently, the State Department announced a $50 million reward for Maduro, marking a significant hemispheric expansion of the campaign.
Mexico faces not only high levels of violence but also a deep governance crisis, where cartels effectively govern large stretches of territory, terrorizing citizens and undermining the fundamental role of the state in protecting its population and ensuring fundamental rights. This dual challenge of physical insecurity and institutional erosion influences Mexicans' perceptions of President Trump’s initiative.
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Trump's Transition to an Operational Leadership Role
For decades, U.S. military involvement in the fight against drug trafficking has played a support role. The Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-South) in Key West, Florida, is a noteworthy example. JIATF-South coordinates intelligence fusion, maritime surveillance, and interdiction in support of law enforcement and partner countries, avoiding direct engagement on foreign territory and in territorial waters.
Trump’s designations of February 2025 as FTO and the secret order of August 2025 break from the status quo, moving towards an operational leadership role for the U.S. military (Reuters, 2025). In addition to traditional maritime and border interdictions, the new set of missions could include cross-border incursions and targeted strikes. The reward for Maduro further expands the scope to a corrupt head of state in office, indicating that the campaign is not only bilateral with Mexico but also hemispheric in nature.
Historical Context and the Current Climate of Fear
Since 2006, Mexico's militarized struggle against organized crime has claimed over 400,000 lives. Cartels control or exert strong influence in key areas of the country, exercising de facto governance: collecting taxes, administering justice, and controlling local commerce (Gutiérrez, 2025). This authority is imposed through a violence that borders on terror, with civilians kidnapped, tortured, disappeared, or executed to ensure compliance. The grim discovery of unidentified mass graves has become an disturbingly common occurrence.
The Mexican state’s inability to maintain its monopoly on violence undermines its legitimacy. No government can effectively govern if it cannot protect its citizens or guarantee their most basic human rights. Widespread insecurity has eroded public trust in institutions and intensified calls for extraordinary measures, including a possible external intervention (Mexico News Daily, 2024).
Mexican Government and Political Leadership
President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has categorically rejected the idea of deploying foreign troops on Mexican territory. In response to the revelations of August 2025, Sheinbaum stated: "There will be no invasion" and emphasized that the U.S. order "has nothing to do with Mexican territory" (Los Angeles Times, 2025). This reflects a long-standing multi-partisan consensus that sovereignty is non-negotiable, even amid severe security crises.
Public Opinion
A Reforma survey from December 2024 revealed an almost even division: 46% of Mexicans supported some form of cooperation with the United States against the cartels, while about half opposed it (Mexico News Daily, 2024). Support is greater in regions most affected by violence, where cartel governance and impunity are most entrenched. However, the historical memory of U.S. interventions moderates public willingness to accept direct military presence from the United States.
Civil Society and Victim Groups
Advocacy networks for victims, such as the LeBarón and Langford families, argue that the state has lost control of vast areas and welcome decisive action, even from abroad (Washington Post, 2019). For many of these families, the call does not arise from political calculation but from profound pain and desperation. They have buried their loved ones, sometimes without ever recovering their bodies, and live daily with the absence of justice or even official recognition. In countless towns, relatives of the disappeared scour fields, ravines, and riverbanks with their own hands, hoping to unearth remains from unidentified mass graves that appear with chilling frequency. Their pleas for help are marked by this persistent pain: they demand decisive action, whether from their own government, which they increasingly doubt, or from any actor, national or foreign, capable of ending the cycle of terror.
Human rights organizations, while deeply sympathetic to these victims, warn that militarization, particularly by foreign forces, could exacerbate abuses and further weaken already fragile institutions (Pew Research Center, 2013). Their focus remains on strengthening the Mexican justice system, eradicating corruption, and ensuring that all security cooperation, both national and international, adheres to human rights standards. Many in civil society advocate for greater bilateral cooperation under Mexican command, rather than unilateral U.S. action, considering that this approach offers the best balance between urgent security needs and the preservation of sovereignty and democratic governance.
Regional Diplomatic Context
Within Venezuela: The Maduro government denounces the $50 million reward for his head as "imperialist aggression," presenting it as a pretext for regime change (New York Times, 2025). State media depict the measure as a warning to other sovereign states resisting U.S. influence.
Venezuelan Community in Miami: The exiled community largely supports the reward, considering it a validation of Maduro's criminality, while some urge caution regarding measures that could trigger regional instability (Politico, 2019).
Colombia: It is likely to discreetly support vigorous measures against the cartels, given its record of security cooperation with the U.S., while remaining cautious regarding border stability with Venezuela (Reuters, 2025).
Other States: Right-wing governments like Ecuador and Paraguay may discreetly support U.S. measures; leftist governments in Brazil, Chile, and Honduras are expected to publicly reject actions perceived as interventionist (Al Jazeera, 2025).
The response of other Latin American countries will influence the internal debate in Mexico, either reinforcing resistance or pushing for a more balanced cooperation.
Implications for Mexico
1. Risks to Sovereignty:
Any perception of foreign troops operating on Mexican territory could trigger a severe political backlash and constitutional challenges. The Mexican Constitution explicitly prohibits the presence of foreign military forces without Congressional approval, and public opinion has historically been sensitive to sovereignty issues due to past U.S. interventions. Even limited and specific operations, if not coordinated transparently, could be presented by the political opposition as violations of national dignity, potentially destabilizing the government and undermining public trust.
2. Institutional Fragility:
The democratic system of checks and balances in Mexico is already under pressure due to widespread corruption, weak law enforcement, and chronic impunity. The introduction of foreign military actors during this period of institutional weakness could further erode the state’s autonomy if command and control structures become blurred. This fragility implies that any foreign-led operation risks undermining Mexico’s ability to independently govern its security sector, which could lead to long-term dependence on external intervention rather than the development of sustainable national capacity.
3. Human Rights Obligations:
The state’s inability to systematically protect the rights of its citizens is both a driving factor in considering foreign military assistance and a warning against it. While decisive action could help dismantle violent criminal networks, there is a well-documented risk that militarized operations, particularly those involving foreign forces, could result in collateral damage, civilian casualties, and abuses. These outcomes could fuel anti-interventionist sentiment, damage Mexico’s international reputation, and provide the cartels with propaganda to portray themselves as defenders against foreign aggression. Any plan must integrate robust accountability mechanisms to avoid repeating past mistakes.
Conclusion
President Trump’s secret order and the reward for Maduro represent a decisive shift: from the traditional supporting role of the U.S. military in anti-narcotics operations to operational leadership in counter-terrorism missions against the murderous cartels of Latin America (New York Times, 2025). For Mexico, where cartels govern extensive territories and terrorize citizens, the appeal of decisive action is tempered by imperatives of sovereignty, historical experience, and institutional survival.
No government can maintain its legitimacy if it cannot protect its citizens and uphold their fundamental rights. Therefore, addressing Mexico’s security crisis must prioritize restoring the state’s capacity to govern effectively, strengthening democratic institutions, and protecting human rights, while carefully calibrating international cooperation to avoid undermining sovereignty.
However, after three decades of sustained effort under administrations across the political spectrum, the Mexican armed forces have failed to decisively defeat the cartels. Too often, military-led operations are compromised before objectives can be accomplished, whether due to corruption, infiltration, or operational leaks. If the strategies of the past thirty years have not produced lasting results, it is unlikely that repeating them will change the outcome.
This reality poses a difficult but unavoidable question: Is it time for Mexico to accept more direct and robust U.S. military assistance? If so, the most effective approaches would avoid large-scale occupation forces and instead focus on joint and combined operations, compartmentalized and intelligence-based, led by vetted units, supported by U.S. special operations forces, advanced surveillance, and precision strike capabilities. Such cooperation should be shielded from any entanglements, operate under effective bilateral oversight, and be designed to dismantle the operational core of the cartels while minimizing collateral damage.
Adopting a new and different approach, combining Mexico’s sovereign leadership with targeted, high-capacity support from the United States, could be the only way to break a cycle of violence and impunity that has resisted all internal strategies attempted over a generation in Mexico.
References
Al Jazeera. (August 8, ...2025). Trump signs an order authorizing military action against cartels: Reports. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/8/trump-signs-order-authorising-military-action-against-cartels-reports
Gutiérrez, J. A. (June 6, 2025). Chin Up: The Deterioration of the Separation of Powers in Mexico and the Storm Ahead. Strategic Intelligence Institute of Miami. https://open.substack.com/pub/msi2/p/chin-up-mexicos-deteriorating-separation
Los Angeles Times. (August 8, 2025). “There Will Be No Invasion.” Sheinbaum is Confident Washington Will Not Attack Cartels in Mexico. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-08-08/there-wont-be-an-invasion-sheinbaum-confident-washington-wont-strike-cartels-in-mexico
Mexico News Daily. (December 24, 2024). Poll: Mexicans Are Divided on the Idea of U.S. Intervention Against Cartels. https://mexiconewsdaily.com/politics/trump-cartels-mexico-terrorist/
New York Times. (August 8, 2025). Trump Issues Secret Order for U.S. Military Planning Against Cartels; $50 Million Reward Offered for Maduro. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/us/trump-military-drug-cartels.html
Pew Research Center. (July 16, 2013). The Mexican Public Supports Military Use and U.S. Aid to Fight the Drug Cartels. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2013/07/16/mexican-public-favors-military-use-u-s-aid-to-fight-drug-cartels/
Politico. (November 5, 2019). Trump Offers Mexico Aid to Combat Drug Cartels Following the Murder of American Citizens. https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/05/trump-mexico-drug-cartels-066678
Reuters. (August 8, 2025). The Trump Administration Considers Military Action Against Drug Cartels, According to U.S. Officials. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-administration-eyes-military-action-against-drug-cartels-us-officials-say-2025-08-08/
Rolling Stone. (May 7, 2024). Trump Plans to Send Extermination Teams to Mexico to Eliminate Cartel Leaders. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-mexico-cartel-raid-2024-election-1235002221/
The Washington Post (December 12, 2019). The LeBarón Family Has a Message for Washington. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-lebaron-family-has-a-message-for-washington/2019/12/12/f326d630-1c90-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html
José Adán Gutiérrez supervises operations and strategy in Latin America, with over 40 years of experience in the military, civilian, and private sectors. He is fluent in Spanish and has extensive experience in intelligence, security, and diplomacy throughout the Americas, including over two decades as a Naval Intelligence Officer and U.S. Naval Attaché in Panama. Previously, he held senior positions at SAIC, Mission Essential, and INDETEC, and holds advanced degrees from the Naval War College and New York University.
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