By Ryan Dubé and Vera Bergengruen

Ecuador has become the latest front in Washington's expanded campaign against Latin American drug traffickers, launching a joint military operation this week against some of the most violent gangs in the small Andean country.

On Tuesday, Ecuadorean and U.S. military forces carried out an operation against what the U.S. has designated as foreign terrorist organizations in Ecuador, the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command said on X. The Trump administration had previously identified those gangs as Los Choneros and Los Lobos.

"Together, we are taking decisive action to confront narco-terrorists who have long inflicted terror, violence, and corruption on citizens throughout the hemisphere," said the Southern Command, the Pentagon's arm for Latin America, without providing more details.

The operation came as the Trump administration has made fighting drug traffickers in Latin America central to its foreign policy.

U.S. intelligence helped track Mexican drug lord Nemesio "Mencho" Oseguera so that Mexican forces could carry out the operation that killed him last month. The American military has destroyed dozens of high-speed drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since last fall, killing at least 131 people, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a policy group.

And in January, American commandos extracted Venezuela's strongman, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife in an audacious operation, accusing them of drug trafficking. The pair deny wrongdoing. They are held in New York awaiting trial.

Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, has said his country was beginning "a new phase against narcoterrorism and illegal mining."

"In the month of March, we will conduct joint operations with our regional allies, including the United States," Noboa had announced Monday. "To achieve that peace, we must act forcefully against criminals, wherever they may be."

Ecuador's Defense Ministry declined to provide details of Tuesday's mission, which it said was part of a broader crackdown called Operation Total Offensive. A ministry spokeswoman said it was withholding information to safeguard similar actions in the future with the U.S. military.

"We are entering one of the most decisive and forceful phases against crime in our country," the spokeswoman said. "And we'll carry it out together with our ally the U.S."

Tuesday's operation came a day after Southcom commander Gen. Francis Donovan met in Quito, the capital, with the president and other senior officials to discuss expanding security cooperation against narcoterrorism. He praised Ecuador as "one of the United States' strongest partners" in going after drug traffickers and criminal groups.

The designation of Los Choneros and Los Lobos unlocked new authorities to use military force against them. During a visit in September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged $20 million to help crack down on drug groups, including $6 million for drones for the Ecuadorean military.

The U.S. military also deployed a contingent of U.S. Air Force personnel to the Ecuadorean military base at Manta in December for a short-term mission to support antidrug operations.

Pablo Caicedo, a retired admiral who last year was the head of Ecuador's Navy, said U.S. military support is crucial for fighting gangs that have expanded into illegal gold mining in Ecuador's remote jungle regions.

In urban centers, Caicedo said intelligence from the Southern Command "is extremely useful" for locating and capturing high-value drug targets.

"The great advantage Ecuadorean troops gain by operating alongside Southern Command units is the precise refinement of intelligence and access to technologies that only the U.S. possesses to wage surgical warfare, given that the threat is embedded within the population," he said.

Ecuador has become a crucial transit country for moving cocaine to the U.S. and Europe from neighboring Colombia, turning the nation of 18 million people into a new epicenter of Latin America's drug war. Colombia, the world's No. 1 cocaine producer, is churning out more of the drug than ever before, U.S. and United Nations officials say, with cocaine gangs spilling into neighboring countries.

Ecuador has been the hardest hit, with the increase in drug trafficking fueling a surge in bloodshed in recent years as local gangs with connections to Mexican cartels and European crime syndicates fight for control of drug routes.

Ecuador now has one of the highest homicide rates in the world after once being one of Latin America's safest nations.

Noboa, a conservative ally of the Trump administration, has pledged to use an iron fist to dismantle drug gangs, deploying soldiers in streets and building a new maximum security prison. Since 2024, he repeatedly has used emergency-security measures to give himself more power to go after crime groups and increased military involvement. He is scheduled to travel to Miami this week to meet with President Trump, along with other conservative Latin American leaders.

Ecuadorean security forces have had some success against gangs, including the capture of the country's two most powerful drug bosses last year. Jose Adolfo Macias, head of Los Choneros, was captured and extradited to the U.S. after being found in a bunker under a marble-bedecked mansion in coastal Manabi.

A few months later, Wilmer Chavarria, the head of Los Lobos, was captured in Spain after undergoing seven surgeries to change his appearance. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said at the time that Chavarria was "one of the most notorious organized-crime figures in Latin America."

On Tuesday, the Drug Enforcement Administration said it helped dismantle a drug network linked to Los Lobos and seize six tons of cocaine in Europe. Sixteen people were arrested, though the DEA didn't specify in which country.

Killings in Ecuador have continued to soar, reaching a record of more than 50 per 100,000 people in 2025. Colombia has had a homicide rate of about half that in recent years, while Mexico was below 20 per 100,000, according to Insight Crime.

Noboa had proposed a constitutional change to allow the U.S. to permanently operate a military base in Ecuador to go after drug traffickers. But Ecuador's voters rejected the proposal in a referendum last year.

Write to Ryan Dubé at ryan.dube@wsj.com and Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 04, 2026 15:01 ET (20:01 GMT)

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