‘No invasion’
Trump’s administration has since added another Venezuelan gang, the Cartel of the Suns, which has allegedly shipped hundreds of tonnes of narcotics into the United States over two decades.
The United States accuses Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro of leading that cartel – an allegation Caracas has rejected as a “ridiculous smokescreen”.
Trump signed an executive order on January 20, his first day back in the White House, creating a process for the designation of the cartels, which he said “constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organised crime”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Thursday interview with EWTN that the designations allow “us to now target what they’re operating and to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defence, whatever – to target these groups”.
“We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organisations, not simply drug dealing organisations,” Rubio said. “It’s no longer a law enforcement issue. It becomes a national security issue.”
Trump vowed in March to “wage war” on Mexico’s drug cartels, which he accused of rape and murder.
After the reports of potential US military action against cartels, Trump’s Mexican counterpart, Claudia Sheinbaum, insisted on Friday there would be “no invasion” of her country.
Sheinbaum has made strenuous efforts to show Trump she is acting against Mexico’s cartels, whom he accuses of flooding the United States with drugs, particularly fentanyl.
“We are co-operating, we are collaborating, but there will be no invasion. That is absolutely ruled out,” she said.
Sheinbaum has been dubbed the “Trump whisperer” for repeatedly securing reprieves from his threats of stiff tariffs over the smuggling of drugs and migrants across their shared border.
– Agence France-Presse
