There is a dangerous pattern on display by the Trump administration. The president and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to hold the threat and use of military force as their go-to method of solving America’s problems and asserting state power.
The president’s reported authorization for the Pentagon to use U.S. military warfighting capacity to combat drug cartels — a domain that should remain within the realm of law enforcement — represents a significant escalation. This presents a concerning evolution and has serious implications for civil liberties — especially given the administration’s parallel moves with the deployment of troops to the southern border, the use of federal forces to quell protests in California, and the recent deployment of armed National Guard to the streets of our nation’s capital.
Last week, the Pentagon sent three guided-missile destroyers to interdict drug cartel operations off the coast of South America, giving the U.S. Navy unprecedented counternarcotics authority and foreshadowing a potential military stand-off against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is wanted by the United States on charges of narco-terrorism. This development is echoed by President Trump reportedly seeking authorization to deploy U.S. military forces on the ground against drug cartels in Mexico.
These efforts are not new. Trump and the GOP have increasingly called for U.S. military interdiction against Mexican drug cartels under the banner of counterterrorism. During his first administration, Trump seriously considered launching strikes at drug labs in Mexico in an effort that was successfully shut down by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
But there are no such guardrails in the new Trump administration, and the rhetoric has progressively crept toward the use of U.S. special operations, specifically. During an interview on Fox News in November, incoming Border Czar Tom Homan announced that, “[President Trump] will use the full might of the United States special operations to take [the cartels] out.”
If that is indeed the direction the administration wants to go, it appears to be taking action to set plans into motion, starting with an executive order on day one that designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations — thus opening a Pandora’s box of potential legal authority to use military force. On signing the order, President Trump acknowledged, “People have been wanting to do this for years.” And when asked if he would be ordering U.S. special forces into Mexico to “take out” the cartels, Trump replied enigmatically, “Could happen … stranger things have happened.”
The executive order upholds that drug cartels “operate both within and outside the United States … [and] present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” It declares a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The specificity of both “within and outside” the U.S. combined with the declaration of a national emergency is perhaps the first step toward the broader use of executive power to deploy military forces in counternarcotics operations not only within Mexico, but potentially the United States too.
To be sure, the Trump administration is already testing the limits of Posse Comitatus — the law that prevents presidents from using the military as a domestic police force — by invoking questionable authorities to use National Guard and active duty troops during the counter-ICE protests in California and, most recently, to declare a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C. federalizing the police force and deploying troops to patrol the district’s streets. Reports this week suggest the administration is preparing to do the same in Chicago.
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