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Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
Politics

Trump signs order authorising military action against cartels: Reports

President Donald Trump had previously offered to deploy US troops to Mexico in April [Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo]

President Donald Trump has secretly signed an order directing the military to take action against drug-smuggling cartels and other criminal groups from Latin America, according to a report in The New York Times.

The newspaper’s report on Friday appeared to confirm statements earlier in the week from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who signalled the US military had approval to take aggressive action against cartels.

“It allows us to now target what they’re operating and to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever … to target these groups if we have an opportunity to do it,” Rubio said on Thursday.

“We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organisations, not simply drug-dealing organisations.”

The news, however, has spurred concern that the military could be deployed within the US and abroad to combat sanctioned criminal groups like the Sinaloa Cartel, Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).

The Trump administration has designated such entities as “foreign terrorist organisations”, putting them in the same category as groups like al-Qaeda, ISIL (ISIS) and Boko Haram.

But a US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the news agency Reuters that no military action appeared imminent.


Mexico responds to intervention fears

Still, during a Friday morning news conference, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum faced questions about the risk of US intervention on her country’s soil.

She acknowledged that her government had received information about the coming order from the Trump administration.

But Sheinbaum denied that the result would be the US military operating on Mexican territory. She emphasised that her country is not at risk of US intervention.

“There will be no invasion of Mexico,” Sheinbaum said.

“We were informed that this executive order was coming and that it had nothing to do with the participation of any military personnel or any institution in our territory.”

The Mexican leader has previously warned that any US military activity on Mexican territory would be a serious violation of the country’s sovereignty.

The possibility, however, has been raised in the past, particularly by politicians on the US right. In 2023, for instance, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — then a candidate for president — repeatedly pledged to authorise use of force against drug cartels on Mexican soil.

Other Republican politicians, like Representative Dan Crenshaw, also proposed legislation to greenlight military action against the cartels.

Such claims have been met with anger in Mexico, where a long history of US intervention has contributed to a strong belief in the need to uphold national sovereignty.

Still, in May, Trump confirmed that, earlier this year, he offered to send US troops to help combat drug trafficking in Mexico. For her part, Sheinbaum said she firmly rebuffed the idea.

“I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale,’” she said at the time.


Wide consequences for the region

Trump’s heavy-handed approach has also caused frustration in other parts of Latin America, as well as thorny legal and ethical issues.

Since taking office for a second term in January, Trump has repeatedly stretched the bounds of executive power by claiming that the US faces an “invasion” of criminal immigrants, thereby authorising him to take extreme action.

But legal experts say it is unclear what the US military might be able to do within the constraints of domestic and international law.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the military from being used as a domestic policing force. Local and federal law enforcement are, therefore, the entities that helm operations on domestic soil to disrupt and arrest gangs.

International laws, meanwhile, restrict military actions abroad except in instances of self-defence. The United Nations charter, for instance, includes language that calls on its members to refrain from “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.

Attacking people outside of combat situations might also infringe upon international humanitarian law.

Critics have also questioned the efficacy of taking such a strong-armed approach to gangs, drug cartels and other groups.

After Trump designated many such groups as “terrorist organisations”, human rights groups pointed out that civilians who live in gang-controlled territory could inadvertently be sanctioned, as they are often forced to pay the gangs through coercion.

Reports that Trump signed the authorisation for military action also come at a tense time for US-Latin American relations.

The US president recently placed high tariffs on Brazil, in an effort to end a trial against his right-wing ally Jair Bolsonaro over his alleged involvement in a coup plot.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called Trump’s actions “unacceptable” and described them as an effort to interfere in the sovereignty of another country.

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