US Sends 600 Troops to Latin America in Anti-Cartel Push
Citing American military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the paper said the vanguard of a 600-strong battalion from the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, New York, has started arriving at a new jungle training site in Panama. The unit is slated to train later with forces in Colombia and Honduras and may assist U.S. Special Operations troops who advise partner militaries on raids targeting suspected traffickers, the officials said.
Additional 10th Mountain soldiers will staff a new Western Hemisphere operations command in Miami. The moves come on the heels of the recent transfer of several MQ-9 Reaper drones from Africa to Colombia and Ecuador, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s creation of an office to oversee counter-cartel operations.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America said he could not recall a U.S. deployment of this scale in the region outside of invasions or disaster relief.
Later this month, the troops are due to join a Colombian exercise called Southern Vanguard. The rotations are temporary, but officials said they could evolve into a more permanent U.S. presence.
Washington has pressed regional governments to step up offensives against trafficking groups and to allow joint operations, but only a handful of countries, among them Colombia and Honduras, have formally agreed. U.S. Southern Command chief Gen. Francis Donovan has said operations will broaden from strikes on boats to targets on land.
So far, the U.S. military has conducted 71 boat strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 239 people whom it has alleged, without presenting evidence, were traffickers. Legal experts have described the strikes as unlawful, and human rights groups caution that land strikes could heighten the danger to civilians.
Some senior U.S. officials have expressed unease that the administration has not defined a clear objective, according to the report. One official warned that an attack on American troops could trigger escalation and pull already stretched forces deeper into another conflict.
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