A regional web of drug routes, militant partnerships, and cartel cash kept Nicolás Maduro in power. US action is forcing the network into daylight.
Democrats deny what mountains of evidence have long shown: Terrorist groups traffic in illegal drugs.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) recently insisted, “There is no such thing as a narco-terrorist,” as he defended his opposition to the Trump administration’s war on narco-terrorism in the Caribbean. He accused the administration of trying “to make this look like it’s ISIS or Al-Qaeda,” ignoring that ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and similar groups have long run profitable drug operations with local and transnational cartels. These alliances increased revenue, financed attacks, fueled violence, and deepened existing conflicts.
Maduro’s narco-terrorist regime threatens regional stability and US national security. Trump’s war on narco-terrorism meets that threat head-on.
Narco Terrorism did not originate with the Trump administration. It was the subject of my 1990 book, which documented how governments around the world used the drug trade to fund and advance terrorist activity. For more than three decades, Washington looked away. That era has ended.
On November 16, the U.S. Treasury designated Venezuela’s Cártel de los Soles — run by Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and key figures in his illegitimate regime — along with Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel, as foreign terrorist organizations. Treasury should have added Colombia’s National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN), a Marxist paramilitary and major drug-trafficking force that controls both sides of the border and works closely with Maduro.
When I began researching narco-terrorism in 1986, I assumed political groups across the spectrum could use terror and drug trafficking to advance their aims. The evidence showed otherwise. Marxist-Leninist and Islamist regimes, movements, and militias initiated, expanded, and ultimately dominated this trade.
Venezuela’s slide into narco-terrorism dates to 2005, when Hugo Chávez expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. After Chávez died in 2013, Maduro took control of both the government and the drug enterprise, tightening his partnership with Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, under the so-called Axis of Resistance. The goal is to counter U.S. influence in Latin America and the Middle East while enriching the regime.
Maduro’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah runs deep. He offers sanctuary and support for their narcotics networks, money laundering, weapons pipelines, and terrorist smuggling throughout the region.
Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal — a former three-star Venezuelan general under Chávez and Maduro and a former member of Cártel de los Soles — described the strategy bluntly in a letter to President Trump. “The purpose of this organization is to weaponize drugs against the United States,” he wrote. “The drugs that reached your cities through new routes were not accidents of corruption nor just the work of independent traffickers; they were deliberate policies coordinated by the Venezuelan regime against the United States.”
This collaboration, built over decades, helped millions of Americans fall into addiction and contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Maduro’s narco-terrorist regime threatens regional stability and U.S. national security. Trump’s war on narco-terrorism meets that threat head-on and is perfectly just.
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- Rachel Ehrenfeld, PhD, is director of the American Center for Democracy, and author of “The Soros Agenda” and “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It“, “Evil Money,” and “Narco-Terrorism.”
- This article was published as Trump cracks the Caracas cartel code,“ by Blaze Media on December 9, 2025.