The Trump administration is advancing the construction of a multilateral justification to intensify military operations against drug trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This is outlined in research by The New York Times, which states that officials from the State Department announced on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly that 14 nations from the hemisphere will jointly designate 25 criminal organizations as terrorist entities.
The signatory countries —all members of the Shield of the Americas, the alliance of conservative governments established by Donald Trump— are Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Peru and Paraguay publicly confirmed their support for the statement; the other governments and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
The formal mechanism invoked is the Rio Treaty of 1947, the inter-American collective defense pact which establishes that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Its application against non-state criminal groups is legally controversial, as the original text was designed for aggression between States.
In his speech before the General Assembly this Tuesday, Trump forcefully defended the strategy: “Upon taking office, I designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and unleashed the Armed Forces of the United States to eliminate them. The cartels are the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere.”
Analysts warn that the initiative aims to reframe what critics see as a unilateral agenda of Washington as a shared regional priority, while simultaneously laying the political and legal groundwork for potential military operations.
Gimena Sánchez, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, warned that the appointments "could undermine national sovereignty and the laws of each country regarding the use of force," and that they could lead to bombings that endanger civilians or expand the power of governments to pursue opponents under the label of "pro-terrorists."
The measure is part of a sustained escalation. Since Trump returned to power, the State Department has added around 20 Latin American groups to the list of foreign terrorist organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel, Tren de Aragua, and Ecuadorian gangs.
Parallely, the U.S. has carried out at least 69 attacks against suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, resulting in more than 231 fatalities. This Wednesday, a UN special rapporteur questioned whether these operations could constitute crimes against humanity.
The most visible precedent of this policy was the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, in what was called the "Operation Absolute Resolution," carried out by Delta Force under charges of narco-terrorism. This operation was presented by Trump as a milestone in the fight against transnational organized crime and set the tone for the military pressure that Washington has since maintained over the region.
The preparation of the joint statement was handled by Juan Pablo Segura, Under Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Kristi Noem, former Secretary of Homeland Security and current Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas, who met last week in Washington with diplomats from the 14 countries.
After Secretary of State Marco Rubio's tour of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, the U.S. also announced the reallocation of 52 million dollars in military aid—from funds from the Middle East and Europe—toward those three countries as well as Panama, to combat "narcoterrorism" and secure the Panama Canal.
Todd Robinson, former Under Secretary of State for Narcotics under the Biden administration, rejected the approach: "They are doing it in the General Assembly to try to give it legitimacy. But I believe the strategy is fundamentally wrong. Criminal organizations are not terrorist organizations."
Robinson also warned that the militarized approach has already led to extrajudicial executions, citing lethal attacks on vessels as evidence of this.
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