From drug boat bombings to terrorist designations to WMDs, in 2025, the Trump administration upended the way the United States confronts criminals, but its impact on organized crime going forward is far from clear.
The first inkling that the US fight against organized crime had radically changed came on January 20 via a decree from the newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump entitled: Protecting the American People Against Invasion.
“This order ensures that the Federal Government protects the American people by faithfully executing the immigration laws of the United States,” it read.
The decree was about immigration but served as the scaffolding on which the Trump administration rebuilt the entire national security apparatus and completely redesigned its global fight against organized crime. It soon translated into widespread sweeps for undocumented migrants in the United States, deportations of foreign nationals to foreign prisons, and the designation of more than a dozen criminal groups in the Americas as terrorist organizations, which opened the door to targeted bombings of boats suspected of carrying drugs off the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela.
SEE ALSO: US Foreign Terrorist Designations in Latin America: An Interactive Map
Trump also used trade policy, leveraging tariffs to strong-arm governments into crackdowns and extraditions of suspected or convicted criminals. By the end of the year, the White House was announcing a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, in which the US aimed to reestablish its preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and the designation of fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
“We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea,” the White House National Security Strategy for 2025 read.
However, in terms of quelling organized crime, it’s not clear if the changes are having any real impact on the ground. In fact, things may get worse. Trump recently pardoned one of the region’s preeminent drug traffickers, himself a former president. Trump’s government also debilitated legal guardrails that hinder money laundering at home and retreated from its financial and political commitment to fight crime abroad.
Threats: Real and Imagined
The Trump administration tackled some real threats. One January 20 decree declared the southern border with Mexico the US focal point. This had its logic, and during 2025, migration hit historic lows in large part because of this emphasis on border security. The buildup on the border drained large criminal groups of what had become a major source of income. However, many of these criminal organizations in places like Ciudad Juárez quickly adapted, turning to other, more predatory, activities.
US pressure has also contributed to an upheaval within the fentanyl business. During 2025, one of the main groups behind the trade, the Sinaloa Cartel, appeared to be fractured and adapting, in part because of the capture and extradition of some of the trade’s top leaders. Most notably, last year’s dramatic arrest of Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada detonated a war between his faction, called Mayiza, and another faction, the Chapitos, in various parts of the country. In some areas, the Chapitos are reportedly aligning with their one-time rivals, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) to help fight off the Mayiza in parts of Mexico.
The CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel were two of six Mexican criminal groups to be labeled terrorists by the US State Department in February. And while Trump has issued veiled threats about violating its neighbor’s sovereignty, the designations have yet to carry over into cross-border bombings in Mexico. The December designation of fentanyl as a WMD appears to provide even more legal and political cover for cross-border investigations and potential cross-border operations, but it’s not clear how the Trump administration plans to employ these powers.
SEE ALSO: What Happens Now That the US Has Labeled Fentanyl a WMD
In the meantime, Mexico is scrambling to placate the Trump administration. In late February, the Mexican government transferred 29 high-level drug traffickers from Mexican to US prisons, which included Rafael “Caro” Quintero, who the US holds responsible for the torture and murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985, and Miguel and Omar Treviño, the brothers who once led the feared Zetas. It also increased its military presence on the border, which contributed to a stark rise in fentanyl seizures.
In other areas, the Trump administration’s moves had more symbolic than real impact. The January 20 decree announced it would be designating a number of criminal networks as terrorist groups but at the time named just two: the Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan prison gang, and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13), the street gang born in the US that has since spread to close to a dozen nations in the Americas and Europe. It was an odd choice. Both gangs are less top-down organizations and more dispersed networks of cells that do not coordinate with each other, and the MS13 is still reeling from the gang crackdown in El Salvador.
Indeed, the details seemed to matter less than the larger narrative that a street gang “invasion” was underway. In a March 15 presidential decree, the Trump administration used that specter to justify the revival of a 225-year-old law that gave it wide latitude to round up foreign nationals it deemed “alien enemies.” One roundup happened in Nashville, Tennessee. Authorities said they were targeting TdA and MS13, but some local politicians and immigrant-rights activists said the operation was more of a dragnet. By then, crackdowns had become commonplace, with some of the alleged TdA members sent to El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo – CECOT). However, no evidence was shown to corroborate these assertions, and soon the Venezuelans were returned to their home country.
That is not to say TdA is not a threat in the region. But the term is now used to describe any Venezuelan criminals abroad, as TdA is now a franchise more than a centrally directed criminal enterprise. While still a force in South America, its activities in the US are minimal. What it is not doing, however, is working with the government of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, as the Trump administration asserts. In fact, TdA is still reeling from a crackdown in 2023, when Maduro’s government raided the prison where it was born. The mining areas in the state of Bolívar might be the only place where TdA is still operational in Venezuela. And, in spite of the confusion, Trump’s invocation of TdA has served to put it on the regional radar, which has made it even more difficult for the group to maintain its limited transnational operations during 2025, although a powerful cell did appear in Spain.
Bombing Drugs, One Boat at a Time
In September, the United States took a quantum leap in its regional drug war, bombing the first of many boats it claimed were transporting illegal drugs on the high seas. The administration made two assertions after the attack. The first was that it was going after the fentanyl trade. Illicit fentanyl, as we have documented extensively, comes via Mexico, not Venezuela. The second was that TdA was behind the alleged shipment; there is no evidence, to date, that TdA is an international drug trafficking organization.
The strikes also faced a barrage of legal scrutiny because of a possible violation of international laws. The Trump administration defended itself, arguing that moving drugs was an act of war carried out by terrorist groups. But the initial bombing had killed 11 people, far more than are customary on any drug-transport boat. And later bombings left survivors, some of whom were subsequently bombed again and killed. The scrutiny continues, so it is not clear if this will remain the way the US government goes after drugs on the high seas (and possibly elsewhere), or if there will be some rollback.
Throughout, the US has blamed the criminality on Venezuela’s most important criminal network: the Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles). The network is disperse and wide-reaching but embedded in the regime of Venezuela’s President Maduro, who was inaugurated in January for another six-year term following his election in what international observers said was a highly fraudulent vote. His government remains a hybrid criminal state with its tentacles reaching into the cocaine and illegal gold trade. These criminal rents help it prop up its ailing economy. The network also has strong ties to the criminal groups that operate in Sucre, from where the first boat had departed. But it wasn’t until November that the US declared the Cartel of the Suns a terrorist organization, so it is not clear how much the administration can rely on the terrorist designation as legal cover to justify its unprecedented bombings in September and October.
Undeterred by the criticism and questioning, the US has kept up the deadly strikes, as well as using the anti-narcotics justification as a pretext to amass a huge military presence in the region. The would-be target of this “narco-terrorist” war is Maduro. The US government has made clear they want him out, but it’s not clear if US warships, aircraft carriers, and B-52 flyovers will be enough to scare Maduro into stepping down. What is clear is that regime change would be messy.
Upending Anti-Crime Laws and Funding
The remarkable efforts to force Maduro to resign for his narco-ties stand in stark contrast to other Trump administration efforts that seem to be sending the opposite message. In December, for example, the president officially pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president who a US court sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States over more than a decade. The decision belied a mountain of testimony provided by Honduran drug traffickers, among other evidence, and undermined a historic and emblematic case.
Experts say the Trump administration may also be opening the door to more corruption of the type that the US government once played a crucial role in subverting. Specifically, shortly after taking office, the administration announced it would stop enforcing the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which aimed to curb money laundering through shell companies, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which allowed the United States to prosecute US companies that bribed foreign officials. In 2016, Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht and its affiliate Braskem agreed to pay $3.5 billion in fines after pleading guilty to US bribery charges.
SEE ALSO: Special Series: The Deadly US Strikes on Suspected Drug Traffickers
The Trump administration also eliminated the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which funded programs aimed to undermine organized crime and prevent the region’s younger generations from joining its ranks, as well as countless State Department programs that strengthened government crime-fighting institutions. In 2025, for example, the United States largely abandoned Haiti, Latin America’s top recipient of US assistance in 2024. Meanwhile, criminal gangs have effectively usurped government power and implemented a brutal criminal regime.
The Trump administration has also pilloried Colombia, its strongest ally in the region for more than two decades. In September, the US State Department named Colombia as part of a list of five countries that failed to adequately confront the transnational drug trade. The US government applied a waiver so counter-drug assistance could continue, but it strongly criticized the Colombian government for its failed Total Peace (Paz Total) efforts, which may have shielded some criminal leaders from extradition to the United States.
Aside from a deal with a small faction, Colombia’s peace efforts have so far failed, most notably with the National Liberation Army (Ejército Nacional de Liberación – ELN), the country’s last remaining insurgency. Over the last few years, the ELN has moved much of its operations to Venezuela and entered into a symbiotic relationship with the Venezuelan government. The situation typifies the Trump administration’s dilemma: Isolating seemingly obstinate allies under the pretext of fighting crime may make for good headlines at home but complicates the battles to come.
In this year’s event, we’re looking back at the last year and the last decade to better understand what’s to come in 2026. Our donor-exclusive event will brief you on the most important criminal shifts in the region and what to expect in the coming year from organized crime and the governments tackling it in the Americas.
