U.S. Troops working alongside Ecuadorian law enforcement carried out a series of raids in the South American country targeting a network of the Mexican terrorist organization Cartel Jalisco New Generation. The Mexican cartel had established a presence there to funnel drugs from Colombia, through Ecuador, into Mexico, and eventually into the United States.
The raids took place early Thursday morning in eight separate cities in Ecuador, where authorities managed to arrest 30 cartel members operating in that country.
According to statements from Ecuador’s Minister of the Interior John Reimberg, the cartel members had no connections to any gangs or local criminal organizations but were directly operating for CJNG. The case was the result of an eight-month investigation that revealed that the presence in Ecuador was primarily to funnel drugs via waterways further north into Central America, Mexico, and eventually into the United States or Europe.
For the raids, 50 members of the U.S. military’s Southern Command worked with Ecuadorian authorities, who deployed more than 320 officers.
According to Reinberg, so far this year, they have seized $322 million worth of drugs from Mexican cartels. The successful operations in Ecuador are part of the Shield of the Americas, an effort by certain Latin American countries to work hand in hand with the U.S. government to fight terrorist cartels.
Earlier this month, Breitbart Texas’s Bob Price reported from Quito, Ecuador, that President Daniel Noboa had fully aligned his administration with Washington’s aggressive strategy to dismantle transnational criminal organizations.
During high-stakes bilateral meetings in the Ecuadorian capital, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Ecuador as the Trump administration’s most aggressive partner in the hemisphere-wide push against drug trafficking networks. The meeting signaled a dramatic shift in South American security posture, as conservative leaders across the region unite with Washington to confront transnational criminal cartels operating in the Western Hemisphere.
Despite the successes of these joint operations in Ecuador, Mexico’s government has refused to take part in the initiative and continues to limit the involvement of U.S. law enforcement in targeting and fighting Mexican terrorist cartels.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.