The Trump administration is preparing to designate a series of Mexican drug cartels and two from Central and South America as foreign terrorist organizations. The move comes as Mexico continues to experience unprecedented levels of violence, including the widespread use of landmines and improvised explosive devices, despite empty government claims that crime has decreased and impunity has ended.
As a tool, tariffs may not be to everyone’s taste, but they are a very effective policy instrument in President Trump’s hands.
Trump knows how to use them.
Mexican drug cartels are ordering their members to attack US Border Patrol agents with kamikaze drones and other explosives in a desperate bid to thwart the crackdown at the border, according to an internal memo obtained by The Post.
The alert, which cites social media posts and other sources, cautions federal agents “to remain cognizant of their surroundings at all times” in the face of the new threat.
Evan Hafer, a popular veteran and founder of Black Rifle Coffee, was on Joe Rogan’s podcast after the November election. As with any Maga acolyte, the US-Mexico border figured prominently in his mind.
“If we declare war on the cartel, these dudes are not going to understand what the fuck is going on. They are in for a world of ultra-violence,” said Hafer, who served in the Green Berets and the CIA.
“JD [Vance] or Trump had said something with the new guy from Ice, like: ‘We’re going to mobilize tier one units against the cartel.’”
American Border Patrol agents stationed at the Mexican border were fired upon by a suspected drug cartel in an effort to smuggle illegal migrants into Texas.
The gunfight broke out on Monday near the disputed territory of Fronton, Texas, exactly one week after President Donald Trump returned to office and began his sweeping deportation crackdown.
While the cartel suspected of being responsible for the violence has been shooting across the border for years, NewsNation reports that the crisis in the region has ‘escalated in unprecedented ways since President Trump was elected.’
BREAKING: Border Patrol agents fired upon by suspected cartel members at the border during a human smuggling operation, according to@BillMelugin_
.pic.twitter.com/HIMIa8wBpD— Caveman Gamer (@CavemanGamer99) January 28, 2025
Drug networks are too complex
Most residents in the town of Jerécuaro in Central Mexico were asleep when the car bomb exploded in the plaza at 5.10 am on 24 October, blowing out the windows of stores and scattering debris. But when a second car bomb went off over an hour later in the city of Acámbaro, 30 kilometres away, many residents were heading to work and school. The explosive device blew up outside a police station and injured three officers. Mexico’s recently sworn-in security minister, Omar García Harfuch, blamed the car bombs on the drug cartels fighting a turf war.
Car bombs are one of the many terrifying weapons in the arsenal of Mexico’s cartels as they battle over territory, not only to traffic and sell drugs, but to steal oil from pipelines, smuggle migrants over the US border, and extort businesses, among other crimes. They also wield weaponised drones that drop makeshift bombs unleashing shrapnel and nails. They lay landmines that kill soldiers in their Humvees as well as farmers. And they build fighting vehicles known as “monsters” that look like they are out of Mad Max, with walls of bullet-proof steel and battering rams.
We had just walked into the fentanyl lab when the cook poured a white powder into a stockpot full of liquid. He began mixing it with an immersion blender and fumes rose from the pot, filling the small kitchen.
We wore gas masks and hazmat suits, but the cook had on only a surgical mask. He and his partner had rushed here to fulfill an order for 10 kilograms of fentanyl. While one sniff of the toxic chemicals could kill us, they explained, they had built up a tolerance to the lethal drug.
But then, the cook jerked back.
MEXICO CITY—The once-unthinkable prospect of U.S. military action on Mexican soil is dominating the political conversation in Mexico as the country braces for President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.
With Trump and his allies this year floating the use of American military force against Mexico’s drug cartels, Mexican officials have tried to learn whether he is serious or merely blustering to gain leverage in talks about shutting down the pipeline of migrants and drugs heading into the U.S. Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has rushed to blunt criticism from Trump’s orbit and put to rest worries at home that there is any danger from the country’s neighbor to the north.
Maybe Trump could order a strike on Harrington lake?
President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to slap a 25% tariff on Mexico’s goods unless it stops fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration risks setting the trade partners on a collision course over an intractable challenge for both countries.
Ahead of the new trade negotiations, Mexico’s greatest weakness has been its historic inability to confront the powerful drug gangs that control about a third of the country. Mexico has had success stopping immigration over the past year, but ending drug smuggling might be an impossible ask, in part because of strong demand in the U.S.
Fentanyl is cheap to produce and easily smuggled. In some large areas of Mexico, organized crime groups dominate local and state officials. Different attempts to fight the gangs, sometimes with U.S. support, have led to violence at home without making any dents on the drug business.
The US has accused a Chinese “underground banking” network of helping Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa drugs cartel with money laundering and other crimes.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged 24 people with offences that also include distributing narcotics.
Law enforcement officers have seized about $5m (£4m) in proceeds, as well as guns and hundreds of pounds of cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy pills.
The DoJ touted the close co-operation with Mexican and Chinese law enforcement – a message that has been echoed on the Chinese side.
American law enforcement officials spent years looking into allegations that allies of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, met with and took millions of dollars from drug cartels after he took office, according to U.S. records and three people familiar with the matter.
The inquiry, which has not been previously reported, uncovered information pointing to potential links between powerful cartel operatives and Mexican advisers and officials close to the president while he governed the country.
Twelve-year-old Andrés Camilo Romaña had spent most of his young life collecting rubbish in the poverty-stricken neighbourhoods of Quibdó in Colombia’s Pacific coastal region of Chocó.
He did not like school because he was frequently bullied. Instead, he preferred to endure the unrelenting humidity of the city, roaming its streets and sifting through bins for anything of value.
“He was a good boy. He worked hard,” his mother, Jacinta Romaña, told The Telegraph. “He was never tempted by the easy money of gangs and violence.”
Mexican villagers who killed 10 members of the notorious Familia Michoacana criminal gang will not be facing any charges after prosecutors ruled they had acted in self-defence.
Prosecutors said that the residents of Texcapilla had come “under constant threat” from the gang, which had tried to extort money from farmers.
They were summoned to a football pitch where gang members opened fire on them.
But they fought back with weapons including shotguns and machetes.
On Dec. 8th, farmers in Texcaltitlán, Mexico, armed with pistols, rifles and machetes, battled with the La Familia Michoacána cartel who had been extorting them
In retaliation, the cartel kidnapped 8 people, demanding 4 organizers of the uprising as their ransom pic.twitter.com/ttR9SZiihP
— Politsturm International (@PolitsturmInter) December 26, 2023
On using military force against Mexican cartels
Nearly every Republican presidential candidate is now calling for direct military action against Mexican-based drug traffickers.
For a long time, Americans have seen drugs as a law-enforcement, not a military, problem. And even with military problems such as terrorism, America’s general preference is to enlist the help of local governments, militias, or political factions to do the fighting. This has been our tack with the Mexican government for years now.
A clash between gunmen from a criminal gang and residents of a small farming community in central Mexico left 14 people dead and seven injured, local authorities said on Saturday.
Dramatic video of the fight on Friday posted on social media showed villagers in cowboy hats with sickles and hunting rifles chasing down suspected gang members amid bursts of automatic gunfire.
The Mexico state governor, Delfina Gómez, and other local leaders condemned the violence. They said it was a product of regional violence that has been slowly brewing for years. She assured local people that maintaining order was among her top priorities.
Attention! Convoy of the Michoacana Family came to collect a fee for planting in Texcaltitlán. The residents could not stand it any longer and confronted the criminals with machetes, stones and sticks. This left a balance of 11 dead – 8 hitmen and 3 farmers. pic.twitter.com/yytSkXkNWt
— 11☆11 (@FREEDOMWWGIWGA) December 9, 2023
Fueron a cobrar piso y acabaron besandolo.
Pobladores de la comunidad de Texcapilla en Texcaltitlán, estadodemexico México se organizaron y se enfrentaron a Sicarios de la Familia Michoacana Fm que llegaron a exigir pagos por permitir la siembra. pic.twitter.com/O7ovi5jzMo— *(M)(A)(T)(A)(D)(O)(R)* (@Matador08640286) December 9, 2023
