Experts have suggested that President Donald Trump’s administration’s recent military strikes against the drug cartels have intentionally targeted cartels operating near Venezuela and not in Mexican territory.
Brent Sadler, a former U.S. Navy officer and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News that cartels are attempting to adapt following the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean.
“They’re going to try and stay alive by moving cargo on aircraft,” Sadler said. “But it’s more expensive, and you can’t move as much by volume, so it’s going to hurt their business model.”
Fox News reported that while the Trump administration has deployed the U.S. military to target drug smuggling operations in the Caribbean region, the U.S. military has not executed drone strikes on cartel facilities, ports, or “narco-targets” in Mexico. The outlet noted that drug cartels use Mexico as a base to produce and smuggle a massive amount of fentanyl into the United States.
The Drug Enforcement Administration reported in 2024 that “nearly all the methamphetamines sold in the United States today are manufactured in Mexico, and it is purer and more potent than in years past.”
Addressing potential strikes on drug cartel operations in Mexico, Sadler said, “Once you go on land, now you’ve got sovereignty issues, collateral damage, all kinds of complications.” The former Navy officer suggested that the Trump administration should continue executing operations against the drug cartel’s trade routes and finances in international airspace and at sea, since the U.S. has better legal jurisdiction in those regions.
READ MORE: Elite ‘Night Stalkers’ forces spotted near Venezuela amid military buildup: Report
Sadler added, “The cartels will collapse under their own weight if their money supply is cut off.”
Contrasting operations targeting drug cartels near Venezuela and potential operations in Mexico, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “The Venezuelan military is relatively weak. And the Congress passed legislation a couple of years ago declaring them narco-terrorists. None of that exists for Mexico … You would have that much less justification.”
Lester Munson, who previously worked as a congressional aide on foreign policy, told Fox News that the relationship between the United States and Mexico makes potential strikes against drug cartels in Mexican territory very difficult from a political standpoint. “Mexico is very different than Venezuela,” Munson stated. “We have, generally speaking, an excellent relationship with Mexico.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne noted that the Mexican government has also tried to be “very cooperative” with the United States on the issues of drug trafficking and migration.
“We’ve seen instances in the past where there have been overflights allowed for U.S. surveillance, satellites and other things to go on,” Wayne said. “But the main operations have remained in the hands of the Mexicans.”
