Cartels are now ‘unlawful combatants.’ About time.

President Donald Trump has finally named the enemy: Mexican drug cartels. Declaring them unlawful combatants and recognizing a “non-international armed conflict” marks one of the most consequential national security shifts in modern history.

For decades, Washington treated cartel violence as a crime — a problem for prosecutors, not generals. Indictments were filed, assets seized, and sanctions imposed. But the cartels fought a different kind of war, one that combined terror, intelligence, and territorial control. Calling it “crime” guaranteed defeat.

We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.

According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, Mexico ranks among the world’s most violent conflict zones — behind only Palestine, Myanmar, and Syria. It is also the second-most dangerous country for civilians. Those numbers are not from a failed state overseas. They come from our southern border, where cartel wars spill into American communities daily.

The old paradigm failed

For decades, federal authorities insisted on using a law-enforcement lens. Agencies operated under Title 21, Title 50, and limited “detect and monitor” authorities. They punished crimes but never broke campaigns. The narrow scope bred strategic blindness. While U.S. prosecutors filed indictments and built cases, cartels corrupted institutions, coerced populations, and built empires.

As the Marine Corps teaches: How you define the environment determines how you operate in it. We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.

Hybrid belligerents, not gangs

By every operational measure, cartels are hybrid threats. They control territory, command loyalty through terror, and run parallel governments. They tax, adjudicate, and even “protect” local populations. Their power rests on corruption and espionage: bribing officials, infiltrating agencies, and compromising law enforcement through human networks that resemble intelligence tradecraft.

Cartels operate across land, air, maritime, subterranean, cyber, and electromagnetic domains. They deploy drones, tunnels, jammers, and encrypted systems. They are multi-domain actors running hybrid campaigns.

Weaponized migration

Cartels don’t just smuggle — they destabilize. Mass migration has become a weapon of war: overwhelming institutions, hiding operatives, and masking foreign infiltration. Millions of illegal entrants from more than 170 nations have crossed under cartel supervision. The intent is not just profit. It’s demographic disruption.

Under federal law, terrorism includes violence intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence government policy.” By that definition, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation qualify as terrorist organizations.

A war of sovereignty

At the Texas Public Policy Foundation, I have testified before the Texas legislature and the U.S. Congress, warning that Mexico’s cartel conflict meets the Geneva Convention’s definition of a “non-international armed conflict.”

I described cartels as hybrid insurgents — foreign terrorist organizations that combine paramilitary violence, illicit economies, and political corruption to dominate populations. In March 2025 testimony, I stated plainly:

Mexico today is more accurately described as a state where governance has collapsed in key regions and foreign terrorist organizations dominate political and economic life, much like Afghanistan.

The president’s declaration confirms what many of us have argued for years: This is not a border problem — it is a war of sovereignty.

Against global networks

Cartel operations now span 65 countries. Chinese networks provide chemical precursors and launder money. Hezbollah and Iranian agents exploit the same smuggling corridors. Russia and Venezuela supply logistics and protection. Europol has confirmed joint cartel-European production of methamphetamine and cocaine. This is global insurgency — hybrid warfare waged through proxies.

The Western Hemisphere’s stability now hangs on whether the United States accepts that this is a war, not a criminal nuisance.

America has seen this pattern before. In Afghanistan, we failed not because we lacked strength but because we enabled corruption. We funded partners already captured by our enemies. The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction documented how U.S. aid sustained the very system it sought to reform.

The parallels with Mexico and Venezuela are striking. Elements of their governments shelter cartels through impunity and contracts. Continuing to fund or legitimize such partners would repeat the Afghan mistake — this time on our own doorstep.

The new designation’s power

Trump’s declaration resets U.S. strategy. Recognizing cartels as unlawful combatants unlocks interagency coordination — treasury targeting financial networks, the IRS auditing tax-exempt fronts, and the Justice Department prosecuting to the “maximum extent permissible by law.” It is a full-spectrum approach that finally matches the enemy’s scale.

RELATED: Latin American leaders react to report that Trump will use US military against cartels

Photo by David Dee Delgado/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The new framework clarifies rules of engagement and intelligence sharing. We can now strike at the networks themselves, not just their accountants.

The cartels serve as convenient cutouts for America’s adversaries. China supplies chemicals, Iran and Hezbollah move cargo, Russia and Venezuela launder proceeds. These regimes use cartels as proxy forces — deniable, flexible, and brutal. The Western Hemisphere’s stability now hangs on whether the United States accepts that this is a war, not a criminal nuisance.

Peace through strength revisited

With this declaration, Trump restores the Reagan principle: peace through strength. As Secretary of War Pete Hegseth put it last week, “Our number-one job is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place.” Matching threats with capabilities sends a message not just to cartels, but to the nations behind them: Challenge us, and you will lose.

To borrow Hegseth’s phrasing: “Should our enemies choose foolishly to test us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies: FAFO.”

The war has been declared. The only question now is whether America has the will to win it. State legislatures, Congress, and the public must rally behind this strategy. Half-measures have failed. The moment demands unity, clarity, and resolve.

America is under attack. The commander in chief has drawn the line. Now the nation must stand behind it — and fight to victory.