Miami — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday urged Latin American countries to take a more aggressive approach against drug cartels, warning that the Trump administration will be forced to act on its own if governments fail to combat criminal organizations that directly threaten U.S. and border security.
“America is prepared to confront these threats and strike alone if necessary,” Hegseth said in a speech at US Southern Command in Miami with defense officials from allied governments across the region.
Hegseth spoke at what the Pentagon described as America’s first “anti-cartel conference,” with representatives from Argentina, Honduras and the Dominican Republic among more than a dozen conservative governments closely allied with President Donald Trump. Most of the military leaders came to Florida with their superiors, who on Saturday are scheduled to attend a summit with Trump at his nearby golf club.
The Defense Secretary said that the United States and Latin America share a common Christian heritage, and that they are at risk as a result of decades of inaction and a purely law enforcement approach to combating organized crime and terrorist networks in the Western Hemisphere.
“Business as usual will not continue,” he added, pledging US support to combat cartels, restore deterrence and “Make the Americas Great Again.”
His comments were echoed by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, the main architect of Trump’s aggressive stance in the region.
“The cartels operating in this hemisphere are ISIS (the Islamic State group) and Al Qaeda in this hemisphere and they should be treated with the same harshness,” Miller said, adding that “hard power” and lethal force — not criminal justice — should be used to repel the groups.
“The human rights we will protect are not the rights of savages who rape, torture and kill, but the rights of ordinary citizens,” he said.
The meetings come as the Republican administration seeks to leverage military assets to regain dominance in the hemisphere while also now fighting a war in Iran.
When Trump took office in January 2025, he pledged a renewed focus on Latin America, a strategic axis that his National Security Strategy describes as a “Trump corollary” to the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which sought to prohibit European incursions into the Americas. The key to achieving this goal is to rely more on the US military to neutralize drug cartels that have long been accused of being responsible for high crime and murder rates, which hinders Latin America’s economic potential and fuels immigration to the United States.
“For too long, leaders in Washington have abandoned the simple wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine,” Hegseth said, referring to Trump’s focus on regional security as the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Trump early on designated gangs from Mexico and Venezuela as foreign terrorist organizations. It was later announced that Washington was present “Armed conflict” With those groups.
The extraordinary assertion of presidential authority to combat drug trafficking is at the heart of the White House’s concerns Legal rationale For dozens of raids on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific – to date, 44 boat raids have been carried out that have killed at least 150 people.
The massive naval deployment, not seen in Latin America since the end of the Cold War, also paved the way for the United States Military operation in early January Which captured then Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He now faces drug charges in New York.
Trump’s approach has won support from conservatives in the region such as El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who came to power on promises to use an “iron fist” against criminal groups. Just this week, Ecuador for the first time Joint operations were carried out With US military forces against organized crime groups.
But relying on the military to replace the role traditionally played by civilian law enforcement carries risks in a region where military institutions and oversight are weaker, the armed forces have a legacy of human rights abuses, and corruption is a persistent challenge.
“Without strong institutions of rule of law and civilian oversight, the militarization of the war against guerrillas could weaken the institutions needed to defeat them,” said Rebecca Bell Chavez, Chair of the Inter-American Dialogue and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs.