President Donald Trump hosted a roundtable Thursday with the Homeland Security Task Force, where he declared that drug cartels are “the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere” and outlined what he described as a “sweeping, unprecedented, and historically successful operation” against cartel networks operating inside the United States.
“These groups have unleashed more bloodshed and killing on American soil than all other terrorist groups combined,” Trump said, adding that cartels are responsible for “cutting off heads, burning their enemies alive and burning innocent people alive too.” He said the administration’s efforts over the past several weeks have led to major arrests and removals of foreign cartel members from US territory.
The president emphasized that his goal is not to contain the cartels but to eradicate them.
“Past administrations have tried to mitigate this threat, and our objective is to eliminate it,” he said. “We’re not mitigating. We’re eliminating. We’re getting them out, the bad ones we’re putting in prison.”
Trump criticized the Biden administration for what he called a failure to control the border and combat transnational crime, accusing his predecessor of having “surrendered our country to the cartels.”
Joining Trump at the roundtable were Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The president said the administration’s latest operations mark a turning point in how the US responds to cartel violence and cross-border criminal networks.
“We’re finally treating the cartels as the core national security threat that they really are,” Trump said. “The cartels are waging war on America, and just as I promised in the campaign, we’re waging war on them like they’ve never seen before.”
Attorney General Bondi said, “We’re dismantling the cartels, and we are taking the leaders into custody, and all of the gangs. We are going to supercharge this work.”
