Trump’s war on drugs stops at Mexican border — for now
Somewhere off the coast of Venezuela, a U.S. Navy radar locks onto a fast-moving vessel skimming through the Caribbean. The ship, believed to be carrying cocaine bound for the United...
By Fox News · Fox News
Somewhere off the coast of Venezuela, a U.S. Navy radar locks onto a fast-moving vessel skimming through the Caribbean. The ship, believed to be carrying cocaine bound for the United States, is one of dozens targeted under Washington’s revived maritime counter-narcotics campaign — a series of deadly interdictions that have brought the U.S. military’s battlefront back to the Western Hemisphere. But as the U.S. clamps down at sea, cartels are already adapting. "They’re going to try and stay alive by moving cargo on aircraft," said Brent Sadler, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former Navy officer. "But it’s more expensive, and you can’t move as much by volume, so it’s going to hurt their business model." Sadler said the shift shows how U.S. pressure on maritime smuggling routes is forcing traffickers to find new ways to move their product — and new vulnerabilities for Washington to exploit. Yet just across the Gulf of Mexico, where nearly all of America’s fentanyl supply originates, the U.S. military presence fades to silence. There are no naval raids off Mexican ports, no drone strikes on cartel compounds, no talk of "narco-targets" inside Mexican territory . The fight stops there — by design. TRUMP’S STRIKE ON CARTEL VESSEL OFF VENEZUELA SENDS WARNING TO MADURO: ‘NO SANCTUARY’ A 2024 Drug Enforcement Administration report found that "nearly all the methamphetamines sold in the United States today are manufactured in Mexico, and it is purer and more potent than in years past." U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported seizing 27,275 pounds of fentanyl along the U.S.–Mexico border in 2023. Border Patrol agents reported the lowest number of apprehensions in fiscal year 2025 since 1970, at 283,000. China remains a key source of the precursor chemicals for fentanyl and methamphetamine, but Mexico serves as the main production and trafficking base. Exports from Venezuela and neighboring Colombia are still dominated by cocaine. "Once you go on land, now yo…