President Donald Trump convened a roundtable at the White House on Thursday afternoon with law enforcement and administration officials to address the early outcomes of the Department of Homeland Security’s campaign against violent criminal cartels operating within the United States.
“We’re here today to discuss a sweeping, unprecedented, and historically successful operation that my administration has carried out in recent weeks to arrest, prosecute, and permanently remove members of foreign drug cartels from American soil,” Trump stated, calling the results “spectacular.”
The president established the Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTF) on his first day in office via an executive order titled “Protecting the American People from Invasion,” aiming to eradicate criminal cartels, transnational criminal organizations, and human trafficking networks within U.S. borders. The directive emphasized dismantling cross-border smuggling and trafficking networks, particularly those involving children, and enforcing immigration laws with all available tools.
The initiative became operational nationwide by late August. “In a matter of weeks, the task forces made the largest number of arrests of cartel leaders, operatives, and gang members in American history—more than 3,000 and counting,” Trump announced. He specifically cited the New Generation Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel, La Familia Michoacana, MS-13, and Tren de Aragua as targets.
Trump labeled cartels as “the ISIS of the western hemisphere” and asserted that his administration was treating them as a core national security threat. “Past administrations have tried to mitigate this threat, and our objective is to eliminate it,” he said. On his second day in office, he designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, formalizing their removal from U.S. territory as policy.
The roundtable included Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and other officials. Bondi reported seizing 91 tons of drugs, including 58,000 kilos of cocaine and 2,300 kilos of fentanyl powder, along with over 1,000 illegal guns. The total drug weight amounted to 152,119 pounds, with officials framing the haul as a critical blow to criminal networks.
FBI Director Kash Patel emphasized the human cost of the operation: “Those aren’t numbers, those are lives.” Noem praised Trump’s leadership in confronting “terrorists, cartels, foreign gang bangers, and other evildoers,” while Miller highlighted the administration’s resilience amid political attacks.
The event followed a U.S. military strike against a “narcoterrorist” boat in the Eastern Pacific, with War Secretary Pete Hegseth declaring, “Every boat we strike is 25,000 American lives saved.” Trump reiterated his stance: “They’re going to be, like, dead.”
