President Donald Trump regularly receives briefings on the fight against cartels, including photographs of seized drugs, according to a senior White House official. He said that during such discussions the president sometimes moves from cartel networks to individual crime victims and asks what more can be done to protect Americans.
The senior official cited official figures for fiscal 2026. According to him, nearly 12,000 arrests were recorded, about 161 metric tons of drugs were seized, criminal assets worth $482 million were confiscated, and about 13,000 weapons were seized. He also said the activities of 676 criminal organizations were disrupted, 6,585 active investigations are underway, and more than a thousand of them target drug kingpins. Another 814 investigations concern organizations designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
According to the official, coordination among agencies is to be provided by the Homeland Security Task Force, which includes more than 20 federal agencies. He explained that there previously were more than 1,800 operational task forces against cartel-linked drug trafficking, and coordination among them was uneven. FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations agents sometimes competed over overlapping charges, and some investigations stalled for years because of interagency disputes. Now, he said, the National Coordination Center links the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security with support from military and intelligence structures. As he described it, the strategy targets not only leaders but also distributors, money launderers and transporters.
The official also gave examples of individual cases. In June in Massachusetts, 26 alleged members and associates of the Trinitarios gang were charged with racketeering. The case involves five murders and 19 attempted murders; in total, 56 charges have been filed in related cases over two years, and the killings, according to allegations, occurred since 2017, with charges including the recruitment of minors. In Louisiana, he said, about 147 kilograms of methamphetamine hidden in modified ice cream freezers and about 100 kilograms of cocaine in a truck cab were found. Regarding Tren de Aragua, he stated that the gang is weakened and less visible on social media, but acknowledged that the group has not completely disappeared. In May, charges were brought against more than 25 defendants in six federal districts, and operations seized more than 80 weapons, about 18 kilograms of drugs and assets worth over $100,000.
It should be noted that all of these figures were provided by the White House and have not been independently verified, and the official did not confirm the claims about weakened gangs with independent sources. The charges in the Trinitarios case are only allegations, and none of the defendants has yet been found guilty.