PANAMA CITY/MIAMI — Barely a week into office, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has cleared the way for the United States to join his government in direct military operations against drug-trafficking networks, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday at a security forum in Panama — a sharp reversal after four years of friction between Washington and Bogotá under former President Gustavo Petro.
Speaking at a gathering of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, Hegseth told the assembled delegations that Bogotá's new government had authorized U.S. forces to work alongside Colombian troops. De la Espriella's administration, he said, had already asked the department to help Colombia "destroy terrorists and terror networks." With that, Colombia became the 19th nation to sign onto the coalition, a Trump administration security bloc that grew out of a March summit and now spans most of South America, Central America and the Caribbean under U.S. Southern Command.
De la Espriella's government had not issued a public response as of this writing, and it remains unclear exactly what joint operations will look like — whether they mean U.S. personnel on Colombian soil, expanded intelligence-sharing, or something narrower. Those specifics, along with the legal framework for any American military presence, will need confirmation from Colombian officials.
From Feud to Alliance in Days
The announcement caps a whiplash turn in bilateral relations. Petro, Colombia's first leftist president, spent years sparring publicly with Washington over its counternarcotics approach and was left off the guest list for the March summit that launched the coalition. His successor took a different path almost immediately: at his Aug. 7 inauguration, held unusually in Cali rather than Bogotá as a signal of his hard line against armed groups in Colombia's volatile southwest, De la Espriella declared that "the option of dialogue is completely exhausted" and pledged to move Colombia into the U.S.-led coalition. Roughly 11,000 troops secured the ceremony, which drew regional Trump allies including Argentina's Javier Milei and Ecuador's Daniel Noboa.
A criminal-defense lawyer and businessman who had never held elected office before this year, De la Espriella, 48, edged out leftist Sen. Iván Cepeda by roughly one percentage point in June's runoff — about 250,000 votes out of more than 25 million cast.
The Miami Connection
For LT readers, this story carries a distinctly South Florida thread. De la Espriella naturalized as a U.S. citizen only in 2023, after years of building a life in South Florida alongside his Colombian political and legal career. All four of his children were born in the U.S.
That South Florida footprint drew a warm reception from the region's congressional delegation. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, was part of the U.S. delegation at the inauguration and called it the start of "a new chapter for Colombia and its people," as the State Department separately said it intends to work with Congress to send roughly $1 billion in security assistance to Bogotá — funding that has not yet been approved or disbursed.
Whether warmer government-to-government ties translate into anything tangible for Colombian immigrants in the U.S. — faster visa processing, expanded consular services, easier travel — remains an open question that will hinge on policy follow-through rather than personal rapport between the two administrations.
Domestic Pushback in Bogotá
Not everyone in Colombia is celebrating. Cepeda, the candidate De la Espriella narrowly defeated, has accused the new government of putting the country's sovereignty up for grabs, saying the president "wants to surrender our government, our territory and our sovereignty" to U.S. interests. Cepeda has also raised a specific legal objection: under Colombia's constitution, only the Senate — not the executive branch alone — has the power to authorize foreign troops entering the country, a point his Historic Pact party is expected to press once details of the arrangement become public. The party, which boycotted the inauguration outright, holds the largest bloc of seats in both chambers of Colombia's new Congress despite sitting in opposition.
Hegseth used the Panama forum to press a second front, urging the nearly 20 governments in attendance to refuse recognition of the International Criminal Court. He argued that ongoing U.S. strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels are lawful under international humanitarian law, part of a broader administration campaign to undercut the tribunal after it issued arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials over the Gaza war and opened inquiries into U.S. conduct in Afghanistan.
Those maritime strikes remain the most contested piece of Washington's drug-war strategy. Since the campaign began last September, U.S. forces have hit dozens of vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that officials describe as tied to designated terrorist organizations. Independent trackers put the cumulative death toll above 220 as of this summer, though no government agency publishes a running public count, and Washington has released little evidence identifying those killed as traffickers rather than low-level couriers or bystanders.
A Government Also Digging Out From Catastrophe
De la Espriella's administration has said little publicly since Wednesday's announcement, in part because it is simultaneously managing the aftermath of Monday's magnitude-7.4 earthquake — the strongest to hit Colombia this century. As of Wednesday evening, the president put the death toll at at least 265, with more than 3,500 people injured and close to 500 still missing across 13 departments; part of a hospital in Cali collapsed with patients trapped inside, and rescue crews described Wednesday as the search operation's "final phase." The toll has climbed steadily since Monday and is likely to keep moving.
