Colombian Aerospace Force (CAF) officers met with the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) commander and high-ranking Bahamian officials in May 2026 to discuss deepening cooperation in surveilling, disrupting and destroying illegal smuggling networks that have connected South America’s top cocaine producer with a contraband transit point to the United States. The Bahamas Minister of National Security Wayne Munroe, Permanent Secretary Bridgette Hepburn and RBDF Commander Floyd P. Moxey, along with his executive leadership team, met CAF representatives on May 7 at the RBDF’s Coral Harbour Base headquarters in Nassau. The discussions centered on formalizing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between…
The Watch
The United States State Department implemented an executive order from President Donald Trump in early 2025 designating eight transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, as foreign terrorist organizations, or FTOs. This expanded the government’s legal authorities to purge the deadly drug cartels from the U.S. The State Department added another five Latin American TCOs to the FTO list in 2025. The directives outlined how these organizations pose a significant threat to U.S. security through drug trafficking, violence and intimidation. The order expands the available means to deliver consequences against the cartels, to include the use of anti-terrorism authorities that have been…
Latin America’s transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, have been diversifying, finding new ways to make money in addition to producing, selling and transporting illicit drugs. The many tentacles of their businesses extend to human trafficking and migration; illegal logging, fishing and gold mining; protection rackets; counterfeit drugs; fuel theft; and timeshare fraud. Their work could be seen at the corner grocery store. TCOs are deeply entrenched in Mexico’s avocado production, sales and transportation. At some farms, they control all aspects of Mexico’s No. 1 export crop. They’re also charging many avocado and lime farmers by the acre for “protection services.”…
The threat from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operated by transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, along the Mexico-United States border is clear and growing, a senior U.S. official told Congress in July 2025. “Nearly every day, transnational criminal organizations use drones to convey illicit narcotics and contraband across U.S. borders and to conduct hostile surveillance of law enforcement,” Steven Willoughby, acting director of the Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Management Office in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), told the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. It was only a matter of time, Willoughby said, before TCOs would deploy UAS,…
The Mexican military executed a watershed operation in February 2026 when its Special Forces killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed “El Mencho.” The killing of El Mencho dealt a major blow to the cartel, also known by its Spanish acronym, CJNG, and demonstrated a higher level of proficiency in Mexico’s fight against organized crime. The cartels have wreaked violence against Mexican citizens while funneling billions of dollars’ worth of dangerous narcotics around the world, including the United States. Mexican Secretary of National Defense Gen. Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said the operation was meticulously planned…
Chemical manufacturers in China continue to fuel clandestine labs by churning out fentanyl precursors and contributing to a crisis that kills thousands in the United States every year. In many cases, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, they are delivering precursor chemicals to transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, which convert them into the addictive and deadly opioid. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has scheduled fentanyl and many precursors on its controlled substances list, the chemicals used to make the drug continue to flow from China to Mexico because the synthetic opioid is…
Russia has ramped up its propaganda machine to peddle lies about the United States’ connections to Latin American drug cartels. Among the claims: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI are enlisting imprisoned members of Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to fight for Ukraine against Russia; and Ukraine is selling donated U.S. weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers, to a Mexican drug cartel. Fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked these lies. Like Baghdad Bob, Saddam Hussein’s fawning mouthpiece during the Iraq War, Russia spins a web of far-fetched falsehoods to advance its political objectives. Among its top priorities these days…
The United States has been helping to counter transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, in Latin America for nearly a half-century. In Colombia, the rise of TCOs in the 1980s threatened that country’s internal and regional stability. The export of cocaine to the U.S. damaged citizens and communities. But in 2000, a joint Colombian-U.S. agreement to conduct counter-TCO operations began, formalizing a relationship with origins in the U.S. economic, diplomatic, intelligence and military spheres that helped Colombia dismantle the brutal narcotics regimes. Mexico is now the center of cartel activity threatening U.S. and Mexican national security. TCOs like the Sinaloa Cartel…
Average daily homicides in Mexico dropped in 14 of the first 20 months of Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidency, declining by 49% since the final month of the previous administration, the government said May 27, 2026. Daily homicides averaged 44.3 in May, down from the 86.9 daily average in September 2024, Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said at Sheinbaum’s daily news briefing. García Harfuch credited a strengthened 120,000-member National Guard and improved intelligence and investigation practices for the crime-fighting gains. He also said about 54,300 people have been arrested for high-impact crimes — including murder, kidnapping and extortion — since the government…
In a significant multiagency operation, the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) Regiment patrol vessel James Fulford, with help from the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force (RTCIPF), intercepted a vessel illegally carrying 240 migrants in TCI territorial waters on May 31, 2026. After evaluating the vessel, the RTCIPF immediately upgraded the mission to a critical incident, prioritizing Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) protocols to avert a maritime disaster. “This mission underscores the efficacy of our multi-agency partnerships,” Lt. Col. Ennis Grant, commanding officer of the TCI Regiment, said in a Regiment news release. “The rapid…