Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Mexico Got Help Killing Drug Lord From Secretive U.S. Campaign Led by FBI and ICE

The U.S. military’s intelligence sharing came as part of a new “counter cartel” task force focused on the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.

A new player in the U.S. military’s decadeslong war on drugs announced itself to the world on Sunday, providing intelligence that supported a Mexican military operation that killed the head of the infamous Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Though details continue to emerge from the operation, which set off a spasm of violence that left at least 70 people dead, some of the information that led Mexican security forces to Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes was delivered by a new Joint Interagency Task Force called Counter Cartel, based out of Southern Arizona.

The outfit operates out of Fort Huachuca, a military intelligence hub nestled in a rugged mountain chain 15 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border. According to media reports, the task force, staffed by a combination of some 300 military and civilian employees, provided its Mexican counterparts with a “detailed target package” in the run-up to Sunday’s operation. The CIA also provided key support for the mission.

Existence of the task force was first revealed in a little-noticed ceremony at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, last month. Its online footprint is slight. The information that is publicly available, however, confirms deepening ties between President Donald Trump’s domestic homeland security agenda and his lethal drug war operations abroad.

Known internally as JIATF-CC, the task force is part of the U.S. Military’s Northern Command, once considered a backwater that today enjoys renewed prominence under Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. In the past year, Trump and Hegseth have used NORTHCOM, as the command is commonly known, to conduct the kinds of operations long associated with the war on terror against targets in Latin America.

To date, the U.S. military has conducted more than 40 airstrikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere, killing at least 137 people without producing a shred of evidence to support its claims. While those strikes have been concentrated in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, the task force involved in Sunday’s Mexico operation is distinct for its focus much closer to U.S. soil.

“What the Trump administration has done more than its predecessors is give NORTHCOM a hugely bigger role,” said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group.

With that newfound stature has come a greater level of secrecy over what, exactly, the command is up to — and whether its operations might spill back over the border into the U.S.

In years past, when his organization would raise concerns over U.S. operations, the military would make available attorneys who could quote the Posse Comitatus Act — the law restricting military involvement in domestic policing — by chapter and verse, Isacson recalled. No more. Even his contacts on Capitol Hill, staffers working on armed services and homeland security issues, have found their letters to department chiefs met with silence.

“It freaks me out when I talk to oversight staff,” he said. “They’re just not getting answers.”

Scant Public Information

In a sparse January press release, Northern Command said the JIATF-CC is a component of the Homeland Security Task Force National Coordination Center. Its mission, the release said, is to “identify, disrupt, and dismantle cartel operations posing a threat to the United States along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

While information on the coordinating center is similarly scant, FBI national security branch operations director Michael Glasheen testified in December before the House Committee on Homeland Security that the president created a wide network of Homeland Security Task Forces in accordance with an executive order he signed on his first day back in office in January 2025.

Titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the order called on the attorney general and the DHS secretary to “jointly establish Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) in all States nationwide.” Their shared mission would be to “end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States” and “dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks.”

Though the order made no mention of the U.S. military, Glasheen’s testimony confirmed the Pentagon had joined the HSTF mission.

“This task force construct is the first of its kind,” he told lawmakers, taking a “whole-of-government” approach and “consolidating all of U.S. law enforcement, military, and intelligence efforts into a targeted effort in combatting these threats.” According to Glasheen, individual task forces are led by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, the powerful investigative wing of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Border Patrol Wants Advanced AI to Spy on American Cities

In addition to more than 8,500 federal agents and officers, hundreds of analysts and legal attachés from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies support the HSTF mission worldwide, Glasheen testified. The national coordination center that the new border-focused JIATF-CC belongs to, he continued, “serves as the primary federal coordinating entity to align law enforcement, defense, and intelligence efforts.”

A recent job posting for a database administrator for the center — requiring at least a “secret” security clearance and paying upward of $189,750 a year — described the “care and feeding” of hundreds of terabytes of law enforcement data.

The precise relationship between the U.S. military and federal agencies like ICE and the FBI in support of the president’s homeland security mission is unclear. Northern Command did not respond to The Intercept’s request for an interview.

We’re independent of corporate interests — and powered by members. Join us.

Join Our Newsletter Thank You For Joining!

Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.

For generations, the U.S. military has played a driving role in the drug war abroad, training allied security forces, sharing intelligence on wanted drug traffickers, and facilitating covert kill-capture operations in nations such Colombia and Mexico.

When Soldiers Patrol the Border, Civilians Get Killed

Beginning under President Ronald Reagan and continuing into the administration of Bill Clinton, Northern Command oversaw a steady growth in military counternarcotics operations on the U.S.–Mexico border, including on U.S. soil. Those operations ended when a Marine sniper team killed an American teenager named Esequiel Hernández while he was tending his family’s goats in West Texas in 1997.

Since then, the Pentagon has largely kept its focus south of the border. That, however, may be changing. A defense official speaking to Reuters said the new Arizona task military force is working to map suspected drug cartel networks on both sides of the international divide.

The director of the task force, U.S. Brig. Gen. Maurizio Calabrese, compared his team’s mission to the targeted killing campaigns previously waged against terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The motivations were different, he said, but in terms of sheer size, the drug cartel threat was perhaps even larger.

The general estimated that hundreds of leaders occupied the upper echelons of Mexican organized crime, supported by as many as a quarter-million lower-level operatives, which he referred to as “independent contractors.”

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.

What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. 

This is not hyperbole.

Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.

Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.” 

The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?

IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.

We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.

That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?

I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.

We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.

That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?

Trump Demanded El Mencho’s Head. Mexicans Are Paying the Price.

“Terrorist”: How ICE Weaponized 9/11’s Scarlet Letter

It Always Comes Back to Our Failed War on Drugs

Rubio Says Maduro is Terrorist-in-Chief of Venezuela’s “Cártel de los Soles.” Is It Even a Real Group?

The War on Immigrants

Trump Won’t Stop Trying to Punish Kilmar Abrego Garcia

A federal judge must decide whether Abrego is the target of a “vindictive prosecution” by the Trump administration.

Trump Demanded El Mencho’s Head. Mexicans Are Paying the Price.

The violence in Mexico is fueled by U.S. guns and money. Killing a cartel boss won’t change that.

Nonprofit Coalition Asks Courts to Prevent Coercive Federal Investigation Tactics

Seventeen organizations filed an amicus brief calling out pretextual federal investigations and arguing for judicial oversight.

© The Intercept. All rights reserved

Enter your email to keep reading for free.

This is not a paywall.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

No ads. No corporate BS. Skip the propaganda and donate to keep The Intercept going strong:

No ads. No corporate BS. Skip the propaganda and donate to keep The Intercept going strong:

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you join us?

© The Intercept