(Al Jazeera Media Network) President Donald Trump has secretly signed an order directing the military to take action against drug-smuggling cartels and other criminal groups from Latin America, according to a report in The New York Times.
The newspaper’s report on Friday appeared to confirm statements earlier in the week from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who signalled the US military had approval to take aggressive action against cartels.
“It allows us to now target what they are operating and to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever … to target these groups if we have an opportunity to do it,” Rubio said on Thursday.
“We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug-dealing organizations.”
The news, however, has spurred concern that the military could be deployed within the US and abroad to combat sanctioned criminal groups such as the Sinaloa Cartel, Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).
The Trump administration has designated such entities as “foreign terrorist organizations”, putting them in the same category as groups such as al-Qaeda, ISIL (ISIS) and Boko Haram.
But a US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the news agency Reuters that no military action appeared imminent.
Still, during a Friday morning news conference, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum faced questions about the risk of US intervention on her country’s soil.
She acknowledged that her government had received information about the coming order from the Trump administration.
But Sheinbaum denied that the result would be the US military operating on Mexican territory. She emphasized that her country is not at risk of US intervention.
“There will be no invasion of Mexico,” Sheinbaum said.
“We were informed that this executive order was coming and that it had nothing to do with the participation of any military personnel or any institution in our territory.”
The Mexican leader has previously warned that any US military activity on Mexican territory would be a serious violation of the country’s sovereignty.
