❓WHAT HAPPENED: Major cartel-controlled smuggling corridors have been disrupted or shut down following a military-reinforcement directive along the U.S. southern border.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, National Guard units, and President Donald J. Trump.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Over the past six weeks in key sectors of Texas, Arizona, and California.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The cartels are on their heels, and they don’t know how to adapt to this level of pressure.” – Senior CBP official
🎯IMPACT: Cartel mobility has been severely reduced, with significant drops in smuggling activity and narcotics trafficking.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says President Donald J. Trump‘s deployment of U.S military assets to assist efforts to crack down on the flow of illicit drugs across the southern border is already bearing fruit. According to the agency, cartel-controlled smuggling corridors—some active for more than a decade—have been either entirely shut down or at least disrupted. The change in cartel position comes after the Trump administration launched a military reinforcement directive, known as Operation Sovereign Shield, six weeks ago.
Operation Sovereign Shield authorized the deployment of over 7,000 National Guard personnel, 24-hour-a-day aerial drone surveillance zones, rapid-response military patrol teams, and mobile checkpoints at known cartel transit routes. The initiative has led to a 72 percent reduction in cartel foot traffic in the Del Rio sector, a 64 percent collapse in vehicle smuggling activity around Yuma, and a 56 percent drop in narcotics seizures as cartels struggle to transport products, according to internal CBP documents.
“We’re seeing corridors that have been active since the Obama years go completely black,” said a senior CBP official. Persistent drone coverage has been instrumental, eliminating smugglers’ ability to operate under the cover of darkness or weather. National Guard units have forced traffickers into bottlenecks, disrupting long-standing routes and increasing the cost of illegal passage.
Since the operation began, six major stash houses tied to the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels have been raided, over 1,200 illegal immigrants intercepted, and cartel scout towers along the Rio Grande abandoned. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials report intercepted communications showing cartel panic, with some leaders calling the U.S. side “unworkable.”
President Trump called the results a “historic turning point” and stated, “For the first time in years, the cartels are losing—not winning. And we’re not stopping until the entire border is secure.”
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