U.S. launches massive counternarcotics ops to combat drug cartel’s attempts to exploit coronavirus

Daily News Article   —   Posted on April 6, 2020

(Compiled from Fox, UPI and WhiteHouse) — President Trump — flanked by Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and top military officials at the White House coronavirus briefing — announced on Wednesday, April 1 a massive new enhanced counternarcotics operation in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea to combat the flow of illicit drugs into the United States.

“We must not let the drug cartels exploit the pandemic to threaten American lives,” Trump said. “In cooperation with the 22 partner nations, U.S. Southern Command will increase surveillance, disruption and seizures of drug shipments and provide additional support for eradication efforts, which are going on right now at a record pace.”

Included in the force package are Navy destroyers, other combat ships, Air Force surveillance planes and helicopters, and ten Coast Guard cutter ships, Trump said, noting that the new forces would double U.S. interdiction capacity in the region — and help slow the spread of the coronavirus by reducing illicit travel.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States had obtained intelligence that cartels were seeking to “take advantage” of the coronavirus to smuggle drugs. …

“We came upon some intelligence some time ago that the drug cartels as a result of COVID-19 were gonna try to take advantage of the situation and try to infiltrate additional drugs into our country,” Milley remarked. “As we know, 70,000 Americans die on an average annual basis to drugs. That’s unacceptable. We’re at war with COVID-19, we’re at war with terrorists, and we are at war with the drug cartels, as well.” …

The other assembled officials echoed his message.

“Every year, tens of thousands of Americans die from drug overdose, and thousands more suffer the harmful effects of addiction,” Secretary of Defense Esper said. “Furthermore, corrupt actors, like the illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela, rely on the profits derived from the sale of narcotics to maintain their oppressive hold on power. The Venezuelan people continue to suffer due to Maduro’s criminal control of the country.”

Secretary Esper also noted,

“Drug traffickers are seizing on this lawlessness by increasing their illicit activities.  We must do more to prevent these drugs from arriving at our shores.  These enhanced counter-narcotics operations that are now underway will further disrupt the flow of illicit drugs to America, deny our adversaries the financial resources they depend on, and build the capacity of our partner nations throughout the region.”

[The previous week, on March 26th,] the Justice Department charged Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro with narco-terrorism by helping to manage and ultimately leading a smuggling organization known as the Cartel of the Suns, which sought to “flood the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users in this country” and offered a reward of up to $15 million for his arrest.

Attorney General Barr called the drug crisis situation a “national security threat,” and said the U.S. was not interested in “half-measures” and made the following comments:

Obviously, during this crisis, we’re all focused above all else on COVID-19.  But at the same time, our law enforcement and national security work must go forward, protecting the American people from the full array of threats.

For the Department of Justice, one of our highest priorities must remain destroying the Mexican cartels.  Their trafficking is largely responsible for the deaths, as we all know now, of 70,000 Americans a year.  And also the costs of this don’t count the destroyed families, the destroyed lives, the draining of our national treasure as state budgets are crushed by the burden that this — this narcotic trafficking causes.

The President has made clear that we are in this fight against the cartels to win, and that we are not interested in half measures, and that the threat posed by the cartel is not just a law enforcement threat, but a national security threat as well.

And, in December, building on your success with the Mexican President in forging a cooperative relationship in the area of immigration, you asked me to go down and meet with the President López Obrador and our Mexican counterparts to see if we could also establish a more comprehensive and coordinated effort with the Mexicans in confronting the cartels.  And we’ve had some successful visits and discussions, and currently have an array of activities underway against the cartels.  And we anticipate, along with the Mexicans, that these are going to bear fruit in the months ahead.

But it quickly became clear that we can obtain the most immediate results, the best bang for the buck, where we increase the assets involved in interdiction on both the Pacific and Atlantic side of Mexico in the Central American countries.  For years, the cartels have been using these sea routes to take the cocaine up from, principally, Colombia — now also out of Venezuela.  And these sea routes on both coasts have become the primary means of bringing cocaine up to the United States.

Because of the superb work done by the Defense Department and our intelligence community, we know exactly, most of the time, where these traffickers are at sea.  But we’re significantly — have been up until now significantly limited in our ability to interdict because of the numbers of the assets we have deployed.

Prior today, this limitation meant we could only intercept a fraction of the traffickers that — and the various boats that were detected.  This will now double our capacity, and we are talking about hundreds of tons of cocaine now — we’re now in a position to seize.

So this is going to radically improve our interdiction efforts and put tremendous pressure, we think, on the cartels.  And the effort that SOUTHCOM is undertaking is going to save lives by taking drugs off the street.

Last week, I announced the unsealing of charges of narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and other crimes against the former Maduro regime — 16 members of that regime — and their involvement in trafficking of 250 metric tons a year.  A lot of that comes by sea, as I discussed at that time.

But also, because of the pressure we’re applying by our sea interdiction, they are trying to establish an air route out of Venezuela, up into Central America, which is one of the reasons we’re trying to move firmly against that corrupt regime.

You know, this drug war has gone on for many decades.  And at times in the past, we’ve had great success and great results.  And at times, we’ve taken our eye off the ball — fortunately, not in this administration. And I’m grateful that you, Mr. President, have brought focus to this fight and the determination to use whatever tools are necessary to win the fight.  The cartels have to be defeated, both for the people of this country and for the people of Mexico and Venezuela.

Read the remarks from the entire hour plus April 1 press conference at whitehouse.gov. or watch the briefing in its entirety at the WhiteHouse youtube page.

Compiled from reports at FoxNews by Gregg Re on April 2 and UPI by Daniel Uria on April 1, and from the Remarks from April 1 Coronavirus Task Force Press Briefing at WhiteHouse .gov. Reprinted here for educational purposes only.