Report: Military Preparing Attacks on Mexican Cartels

The Trump administration has directed the military to prepare for lethal strikes against cartel targets inside Mexico, former Intercept journalist Ken Klippenstein reported.

The top-secret planning order, issued in late spring, directs Northern Command (NORTHCOM) to manage the attacks, which are to be ready by mid-September.

“Not only is Donald Trump uniquely focused on TCOs [transnational criminal organizations, the official name for cartels], having designated them terrorists in one of his first Executive Orders, but he has shown himself to be willing to take unilateral action despite potentially negative political ramifications,” says one senior intelligence official. He and the other sources say that military action could be unilateral — that is, without the involvement or approval of the Mexican government.

The unprecedented order was discussed at a July meeting at NORTHCOM headquarters in Colorado Springs that was led by Colby Jenkins, the unconfirmed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. Within days, Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of NORTHCOM, hosted the two highest ranking Mexican military officials: Gen. Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, Secretary of National Defense, and Adm. Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, Secretary of the Navy.

"Today, more than ever, the challenges we face demand a joint, coordinated, and adapted response," Morales said after the Colorado visit, trying to impress upon Pentagon and military leaders that any potential operation be conducted by the two nations together.

To address the extreme political sensitivities and to honor Mexico's sovereignty, operations inside Mexico have previously been conducted by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the clandestine arm of the U.S. military that has been involved in targeted killings in the Middle East. The New York Times has reported that the CIA has increased reconnaissance operations over Mexico with its own drones, another indicator of increased preparations for operations.

“NORTHCOM was previously sidelined in any Mexico planning, the conventional special operations components mostly involved in joint training with their Mexican counterparts and non-lethal missions such as at-sea interdictions of shipments, but now it is being tasked to be the hemispheric synchronizer, of a far larger magnitude” says the senior intelligence official. One reason is that prospective attacks also have to coordinate with the intelligence community at large, the FBI, and various homeland security agencies (such as Border Patrol and ICE) who all now are focused on Mexico (and are conducting their own operations inside Mexico).

NORTHCOM is already involved in Mexico in a host of ways, including in combating the cartels. Gen. Guillot alluded to this in recent testimony to Congress, where he said that his cooperation with Mexico is already closer than at any point in history.

“It is already apparent the military-to-military relationship between the United States and Mexico is robust and expanding as both nations address the challenges posed by common threats to our citizens and shared interests. The bonds between USNORTHCOM and our Mexican military partners are broad, resilient, and focused on expanding our combined capability to defend and secure North America from myriad state and non-state threats. Countering competitor influence in the region remains a key priority for USNORTHCOM and our Mexican military partners, and as a direct result, the U.S. and Mexican militaries are more operationally compatible than at any point in our shared history.”

That’s the overt side: countering Chinese influence and investments in Mexico, thwarting Russian influence (and operations); and stemming the flow of drugs, precursor chemicals and even weapons of mass destruction components through Mexico.

Now, NORTHCOM has tasked its subordinate Special Operations Command (called SOCNORTH) to undertake “operational preparation of the battlespace” inside Mexico to set the stage for future military operations, and to prepare cartel-related “target packages” for potential strikes and “direct action” attacks on the ground against high-value individuals, compounds, and supply chain targets associated in particular with the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Direct attacks could also involve air and drone strikes.

When Trump declared the cartels’ trafficking of drugs and people into America an “invasion,” he wasn’t joking. Far from a rhetorical flourish, it’s by now clear that the language he’s using has created the basis for the military to prepare to respond to cartels in a similar way that it did with terrorists after 9/11.

“We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug dealing organizations,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the cartels in a recent interview.

Trump, military sources also tell me, is focused on results, willing to ignore law, rules, and even policy recommendations in his zeal to have “progress” towards his goals with regard to national security. For the White House, the fentanyl crisis in America is one of the key measures of the success of the new war on the cartels.

Fentanyl’s death toll represents a crisis, having claimed the lives of over 225,000 Americans.

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