“The cartels that operate in this hemisphere are the ISIS and the Al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere,” and must face similar counterterrorism measures, stated Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
As the Shield of the Americas Summit is set to convene in Florida, Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy, laid out the Trump administration’s priorities in combatting narcoterrorism in the Western hemisphere and how the new Monroe Doctrine will play out. Criminal cartels and dictators who protect them have fueled crime, death, and chaos in the Americas for long enough.
.@StephenM at the Americas Counter Cartel Conference at U.S. Southern Command: “The cartels that operate in this hemisphere are the ISIS and the Al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere and should be treated just as brutally and just as ruthlessly as we treat those… pic.twitter.com/g557ZsCON8
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 5, 2026
Miller declared while speaking at an official Department of War event, “There’s been a paradigm shift under President Trump in the Western Hemisphere in the last 14 months. Some of that was touched on by the earlier speakers, but just to restate it, we are not going to cede an inch of territory in this hemisphere to our enemies or our adversaries.”
The Biden administration helped criminal cartels from Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, and other countries expand their businesses, but the Trump administration is aiming to do the exact opposite. “Our national security, our homeland security, the safety and well-being of our people begins at home, begins in our neighborhood, begins in our home region,” Miller emphasized. “And for too long, we have allowed foreign enemies, foreign adversaries, and enemy terrorist organizations to control territory and spaces in this hemisphere, where they can project power, project threats, and directly threaten the lives of your citizens and our citizens.”
🚨Alert: Splash #21! US 20 strikes & destroys 21x narco boats – 17x surface boats and 4x semi-submersibles. Strikes killed 80 with 3 survivors (repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador)! 🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/5B7xEShutL
— US Homeland Security News (@defense_civil25) November 16, 2025
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Continuing to address Latin and South American leaders as his primary audience, Miller went on, “And so, under the leadership of President Trump, we are using hard power, military power, lethal force, to protect and defend the American homeland. Not a single one of your nations should tolerate the existence of a single square mile of territory that is under the control of any entity other than the sovereign government of your country.”
The countries whose leaders received invitations to the summit include Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
This Shield of the Americas Summit is aimed at creating a coalition of governments to stamp out narcoterrorism in this hemisphere. Miller bluntly and fearlessly stated, “The idea that we would have in this hemisphere areas that are under the physical control of foreign terrorist organizations, paramilitary organizations, is completely unacceptable. The cartels that operate in this hemisphere are the ISIS and the Al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere and should be treated just as brutally and just as ruthlessly as we treat those organizations.”
He concluded:
We have learned, after decades of effort, is that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem. There are elements of the problem that require criminal justice solution, to be sure. But just as we fought Al-Qaeda and fought ISIS with the tip of a very lethal spear, the reason why this is a conference with military leadership, and not a conference of lawyers, is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power.
The cartels are at war with us, and America is finally taking the war to their doorstep.
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