August 15, 2025, 5:04 pm
Author – Nick Turse
More than 30 humanitarian, public interest, immigrant rights, faith-based, veterans’ advocacy, and drug policy reform groups are calling on Congress to oppose the use of military force against drug cartels in Latin America by the Trump administration.
Melding two failed American wars — the war on drugs and the war on terror — would “put people at risk of violence and destabilize hemispheric relations while hindering, not helping, efforts to protect communities from drug trafficking and other crime,” according to the organizations, which include the Alianza Americas, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Drug Policy Alliance, Public Citizen, and Win Without War.
President Donald Trump has secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against select Latin American drug cartels that his administration has deemed terrorist organizations, according to an Intercept interview with a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak to the media. The authorization was first reported by the New York Times.
The decision to involve the American military in what has previously been considered a law enforcement effort comes as Trump has increasingly turned to U.S. troops for law enforcement purposes on American soil and taken over the D.C. police. These efforts are seen as dangerous escalations of the use of military force and violations of long-held norms.
The letter, sent to top congressional leaders on Friday, urges lawmakers “to use the full slate of its powers to prevent the administration from launching a new war in Latin America without democratic debate or public accountability” by “organiz[ing] hearings to assess the scope of the administration’s envisioned use-of-force policy and its likely diplomatic, economic, and human impacts” and “withhold[ing] funding for unauthorized, undebated, and unaccountable military action.”
In January, the State Department declared eight Mexican drug cartels — the Sinaloa cartel, CJNG, the Northeast cartel, the Michoacán family, the United Cartels, and the Gulf Cartel — to be foreign terrorist organizations. The Salvadoran MS-13 and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang were also named. That designation activates U.S. sanctions, including restrictions on financial transactions and bans on U.S. citizens from providing support to the groups.
That same month, Trump mused that he might send U.S. commandos into Mexico to battle cartels. “Could happen,” he said. “Stranger things have happened.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened military action on Mexican soil. And a Justice Department guidance document urged employees to work toward the “total elimination of cartels.”
The coalition of groups pointed to the potential blowback of expanding the forever wars to Mexico and beyond. “Unilateral and hastily conceived military action could contribute to the considerable human rights abuses, criminal violence, and forced displacement already harming communities in Latin America,” reads the letter. “Militarized approaches to countering narcotics trafficking have often backfired. They have inadvertently incentivized criminal groups to traffic smaller and more potent drugs to evade interdiction, acquire deadlier weapons, and expand their networks of corruption to protect their profits.”
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum last week rejected the use of U.S. troops in her country. But earlier this week, Mexico extradited 26 alleged cartel members to the United States. Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the cooperation. “These 26 men have all played a role in bringing violence and drugs to American shores — under this Department of Justice, they will face severe consequences for their crimes against this country,” she said. “We are grateful to Mexico’s National Security team for their collaboration in this matter.”
The U.S. war on drugs, first declared by Richard Nixon in 1971, has been an abject failure. It’s estimated that the United States has spent more than $1 trillion battling the drug trade and drug use with dismal results. Nearly 1 million arrests are made for drug law violations in the U.S. each year, according to FBI statistics, making it the leading cause of arrest in the United States. One in 3 people in the U.S. has lost someone they know to a drug overdose. In 2024, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called the worldwide war on drugs a “clear failure” and called out “militarized law enforcement responses” around the world.
“Overseas military strikes certainly won’t solve drug overdose deaths in the U.S., which are far better addressed through public health measures,” said Stephanie Brewer, the director for Mexico at the Washington Office on Latin America or WOLA, another signatory of the letter. “What military action abroad would do is open the door to increased violence, forced migration, and incalculable damage to U.S. relations with neighboring countries.”
Trump has already sent thousands of National Guard and active-duty troops to the southern border to ostensibly halt the flow of drugs as well as immigrants. More than 10,000 troops are deploying or have deployed there, according to Northern Command. Under the direction of NORTHCOM, military personnel have deployed under the moniker Joint Task Force-Southern Border since March, bolstering approximately 2,500 service members who were already supporting U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s border security mission.
One-third of the U.S. border is now completely militarized due to the creation of four new national defense areas, or NDAs: sprawling extensions of U.S. military bases patrolled by troops who can detain immigrants until they can be handed over to Border Patrol agents.
“Launching military action in Latin America without congressional authorization would be illegal, reckless, and a betrayal of our democratic process — and Congress must intervene to stop it,” Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War, told The Intercept. “We’ve seen this ‘war on drugs’ playbook before in the region, and it has failed time and again — fueling violence, displacing communities, and doing nothing to address the root causes of drug trafficking.”
Haghdoosti added, “What makes this even more egregious is that the Trump administration is pushing for war while slashing the very public health programs that save lives. People need healthcare, treatment, and support — not military posturing and strikes.”
The post Can Congress Stop Trump From Starting a War in Mexico? appeared first on The Intercept.
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Author: Nick Turse
