Secretary Pete Hegseth explained the Trump administration’s new partnership with some Latin American governments to use full military force to target drug cartels, “Americas Counter Cartel Coalition — A3C,” on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” The 17-nation alliance, previously referred to as “Shield of the Americas,” was established in March 2026 to combat drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations directly from SOUTHCOM.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Let me ask you about Venezuela, because there was also big news within the past few days. President Trump said the U.S. military killed Nino Guerrero, the leader of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, or TdA, in an airstrike earlier this week. He had been indicted in the Southern District of New York for many crimes. I’m wondering, why go with a strike option. Why not snatch and grab him and make him face justice in a US court, like you did with Nicolas Maduro? SEC. HEGSETH: I was going to say we did that. We’ve shown we can do that when we did it with Nicolas Maduro, and because of that, it created the conditions where, in partnership with the Venezuelan government, this is a huge deal. I mean, they invited our military in because they have a fair- foreign terrorist organization on their soil in Tren de Aragua, the founder and leader, and we were able to identify where he was and kill him, just like we would kill al-Qaeda or ISIS, and we did in the Middle East. We treat these foreign terrorist organizations the same way, just like we do with drug boats when we identify they’re run by those FTOs. So that’s a great development. I mean, think about that. President Trump had the foresight to seize Maduro, change the relationship. We have a totally different energy dynamic around the world. By the way, the way energy flows today, the straits will be nowhere near as relevant one to two years from now, because of the foresight of President Trump. He’s made us energy independent at home, we’re export- net exporter. Now, Venezuela, through our partnerships, now we’re killing foreign terrorist leaders who have terrorized the American people. The amount of drugs and gangs that came– MARGARET BREANNAN: –Yeah, energy- energy prices are pretty high right now– SEC. HEGSETH: –huge deal– MARGARET BRENNAN: So, I don’t know that the independence is helping people at the pump– SEC. HEGSETH: –they are coming down and you’ve seen it. They are. MARGARET BRENNAN. We’ll talk about that later in the program, but I want to come back to the Venezuela point, given that the U.S. military just carried out this operation, should Americans understand that the US will remain militarily involved in Venezuela? Should they expect similar operations in places like Ecuador and Guatemala, where the US is working with their government? SEC. HEGSETH: Yes, they should. It’s called the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, A3C, and we’re forming it with partner governments all around Central and South America to go after, defeat, and destroy foreign terrorist organizations, drug cartels. And all those countries you named are stepping up to work on partnerships with the United States, where we work with their governments and their militaries with their special capabilities and our special capabilities to hunt terrorist networks in our own hemisphere, just like we showed we were very good at with ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Middle East for 20 years. It’s an incredible reinforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, now the Donroe Doctrine. We’re taking back control of our hemisphere and ensuring the poisoning and attacks on the American people end. So, it’s- it’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful military thing to behold, other countries coming to us to work with us, and we’re going to take full advantage of it.

Here is Hegseth’s full interview from this morning on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”
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