Media: Trump supports "military options" against Mexican cartels.

Former US President Donald Trump has vowed to deploy US special forces to “inflict maximum damage” on drug cartels if he is reelected. He has asked multiple policy advisers to draw up “battle plans” to deal with Mexican cartels as he aims to return to the White House in 2024. Staffers have presented the former president with multiple different plans, some of which involve unilateral military action and US troop deployments in Mexico without permission from local authorities. One potential option was outlined in an October 2022 policy paper from the Center for Renewing America (CRA). The document titled ‘It’s Time to Wage War on Transnational Drug Cartels’ calls on the next Republican administration to launch armed attacks on drug traffickers, citing “the mounting bodies of dead Americans from fentanyl poisonings.” Trump has previously pledged to use special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.

He also publicly weighed up whether to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, but later agreed to call off the move after talks with his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Trump successfully pressured Mexico City to deploy some 15,000 soldiers to help secure the border with the US after threatening new tariffs.