President Donald Trump hosted a roundtable Thursday with law enforcement and other administration officials to follow up on his goal of cracking down on cartels.
On his first day back in office, Trump created Homeland Security Task Forces to bring together federal, state and local officials to achieve the goal of “eliminating the cartel presence in America once and for all,” Trump said.
Just 10 months in, the results have been “spectacular,” he said.
The Homeland Security Task Forces were created by the president on Jan. 20 and directed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi to protect the American people “against invasion.”
During Thursday’s meeting, officials provided Trump with updates on their efforts. The details of Thursday’s meeting were first reported by Fox News and confirmed to the Deseret News by a White House official.
“In a matter of weeks, the task force has made the largest number of arrests of cartel leaders, operatives and gang members in American history, more than 3,000 and counting,” Trump said.
He noted that arrests have targeted the Sinaloa cartel, the La Nueva Familia Michoacana (LNFM) cartel, the MS-13 cartel and the Tren de Aragua cartel. Those cartels have killed more Americans than “all other terrorist groups combined,” Trump alleged, calling them the “worst of the worst.”
“It should now be clear to the entire world that these cartels are the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere,” he said.
The roundtable was held now because the task forces became “fully operational” in all 50 states last month, the president said.
“We’re not mitigating, we’re eliminating,” Trump said, noting narcotics and gun seizures.
Noem, Bondi, deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard all joined Trump for the roundtable and praised his efforts to crack down on cartel-related crime.
“Under President Trump we are destroying the infrastructure and we’re no longer on the defense,” Bondi said of cartel gangs. “We’re dismantling the cartels and we are taking the leaders into custody and all of the gangs. We are going to supercharge this work. This is not a pilot program. This is permanent. We are here to stay.”
Noem echoed the attorney general’s remarks and noted the heightened security focus at the southern border. She shared that Border Patrol has seized fentanyl and cut down on the amount of the dangerous drug entering the country.
Hegseth similarly acknowledged the administration’s efforts against cartels at the southern border. He said there are as many as 10,000 troops still at the U.S.-Mexico border to assist in anti-cartel efforts.