From mega-prisons to missile strikes on civilian vessels, governments in the Americas are increasingly turning to exceptional uses of state power to combat criminal gangs. Global Insight examines the implications for the rule of law.

The capture of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes – ‘El Mencho’ – in February by Mexican armed forces marked another significant chapter in the country’s ‘war on drugs’. El Mencho, who later died in custody from wounds sustained in a firefight during his arrest, was the notorious leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel. At the time of his capture, the US was offering a $15m bounty for information leading to his arrest – part of its efforts to combat drug trafficking by armed criminal groups such as Jalisco.

Cartels are extremely violent actors in Mexico, where they protect trafficking routes and conduct extortion rackets using armed robbery, murder and forced disappearances. The downfall of El Mencho, then, is of similar significance to the capture of the Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in 2016.

‘Mexico’s government under President Claudia Sheinbaum has shifted from her predecessor’s “hugs, not bullets” approach towards a more structured strategy against criminal organisations, emphasising prevention, military strengthening, intelligence and coordination,’ says Daniel Del Rio, Chair of the IBA Legal Practice Division.

‘The government maintains a “priority targets” list categorising criminal actors by threat level and activity, including top cartel bosses and mid-level commanders tied to extortion and regional violence,’ says Del Rio, a partner at SMPS Legal in Mexico City. He highlights that recent operations by the Mexican army and National Guard have seized arms and drugs and arrested suspects from transnational criminal organisations such as Sinaloa and Jalisco. ‘This selective targeting aims to disrupt without provoking large-scale violence,’ says Del Rio.

Both the Jalisco and the Sinaloa cartels have been designated as terrorist organisations by the US under President Donald Trump. His administration is pursuing a newly militarised strategy against criminal organisations in Latin America, which it claims exposes US citizens to the harmful effects of drugs such as cocaine and fentanyl through their trafficking operations over the US-Mexico border. It justifies such action against armed groups operating outside the state – which it refers to as gangs, drug cartels or terrorist organisations – as necessary for the protection of US sovereignty and society.

In January, the US launched the Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel, which involves multiple government agencies and is established under the US Army’s Northern Command. The Task Force will target organisations in Mexico and was part of the operation to capture El Mencho.

‘US pressure, mainly from President Trump’s administration, has pushed Sheinbaum to intensify anti-cartel operations through threats of tariffs, military intervention and sanctions tied to fentanyl flows and border security,’ says Del Rio. This has led to increased cooperation between the US and Mexico to address cartels. ‘While Mexico resists [the presence of] US troops [on the ground] and sovereignty breaches, it has responded with troop deployments, extraditions and deeper bilateral coordination, influencing a tactical shift toward more aggressive enforcement,’ he says.

Exceptional state power

Then-President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, launched the country’s ‘war on drugs’ in 2006 as part of his efforts to tackle criminal groups. The ‘war’ has resulted in the militarisation of public security and the fragmentation of, and increased conflict between, drug cartels. According to the Center for Preventive Action, part of the Council on Foreign Relations, Mexico still ‘reports over thirty thousand crime-related deaths per year.’

From its roots in Mexico and Colombia, the ‘war on drugs’ has expanded across Latin America, with a similar approach being introduced more recently in Ecuador and Costa Rica, for example. The targets are gangs, broadly defined as armed groups involved in a wide range of criminal activities ranging from extortion to murder. The status of these groups as non-state armed actors creates a dilemma for national governments in dealing with them, since they have access to lethal weapons and military training, while they maintain control over territory, including by holding it against state forces. Gangs also exercise power through alliances, running government corruption networks and pursuing protection pacts with state representatives.

Governments in the Americas are increasingly responding to the issue with exceptional state power. The result is often the weakening of the rule of law and the abuse of human rights, and, in some cases, damage to the international order itself.

In January, the US took military action in Venezuela, arresting its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. The couple were taken to New York, where Maduro is to stand trial on charges including that of ‘narco-terrorism’. He has pleaded not guilty.

Many commentators have argued that the capture of a sitting president, as well as US missile strikes against suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, break key covenants of the international rules-based order, including the sovereignty of individual nation-states and the prohibition on extrajudicial killing.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated that his country is ‘at war against drug trafficking organisations’, while the White House has rejected claims that the military strikes on Venezuela and alleged smugglers are illegal. Instead, it frames them as lawful self-defence and counter narco-terrorism actions.

Ben Saul is the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. He told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that states must take all ‘feasible and lawful measures’ to address transnational organised criminal violence associated with drug trafficking and accused the US of ‘responding with lawless violence that flagrantly violates human rights, in its phoney war on so-called “narco-terrorism”.’ He added that ‘the human rights-compliant response to organised crime is to make effective use of cooperative bilateral, regional and multilateral legal frameworks and tools.’

The mega-prison

Despite the concerns, the Trump administration’s project against gang violence in Latin America and the Caribbean continues apace. It has secured the support of regional governments under the ‘Shield of the Americas’ initiative, the members of which include Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, among others. The group’s first meeting established the ‘Americas Counter Cartel-Coalition’, a 17-nation military alliance, which the US says is ‘built around a commitment to using lethal military force against cartel and narcoterrorist networks.’

A precursor to the type of crackdown the ‘Shield of the Americas’ is pursuing was the establishment in El Salvador of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) under President Nayib Bukele. It’s a 40,000-capacity prison, home to thousands of people accused of being criminal gang members. According to critics, many have been locked up without due process, although Bukele has said that some 8,000 people found innocent have been released. In 2025 President Bukele agreed to receive deportees from the US, where the Trump administration is committed to the mass deportation of millions of migrants. Some 260 people have been deported from the US to CECOT so far.

North American Regional Forum Liaison Officer of the IBA War Crimes Committee. ‘It may appear even more attractive when you look at the statistical data on how widely supported those measures were by the population of El Salvador,’ she says, adding that this popularity can translate into gains at the ballot box for governments implementing similar models.

However, Abovyan, a Yale World Fellow based in the US, says that ‘there are tangible risks, which are already observable’ in El Salvador. For example, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal have documented widespread human rights violations committed during the state of emergency, including arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances.

In 2024, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a report examining the state of emergency in El Salvador, which highlighted allegations of human rights violations perpetrated by the security forces, including arbitrary detentions, illegal searches of homes and violations of the rights of children and adolescents. Further, the Commission said it had received information about challenges to access to justice in the country. For example, there are concerns about the lack of evidence to support charges being brought against suspects, as well as the holding of mass judicial hearings. The decline of human rights and the deterioration of democratic institutions and the rule of law ‘should not be the price for protecting […] society against crimes,’ says Abovyan.

In March, the International Group of Experts for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations under the State of Exception in El Salvador told the UN Human Rights Council that there are reasonable grounds to conclude that crimes against humanity are being committed. ‘The Bukele model is sustained by the dismantling of the rule of law to systematically violate human rights without institutional restraints. In the very short term, it may appear to improve security, but it inevitably weakens the very security it claims to protect,’ said Santiago Cantón, General-Secretary of the International Commission of Jurists.

Kirsty Sutherland, Co-Chair of the IBA War Crimes Committee, urges particular attention to be paid to allegations about the use of torture inside CECOT. ‘There is never any justification for the use of torture,’ she says, highlighting that ‘the rule is deontologically founded and so strict that no court can rely on material potentially obtained by torture for the truth of its contents.’ Sutherland adds that ‘poor detention conditions can in themselves constitute coercive circumstances and thus contravene the [UN] Convention against Torture.’

El Salvador’s government has rejected allegations of any human rights abuses. Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adriana Mira, has said that the country’s government doesn’t engage in forced disappearances or related violations, while the Public Defender General, René Escobar, denied that El Salvador state policy involves torture or arbitrary executions.

Inspired by CECOT

The CECOT high-security prison model is providing inspiration for other governments in the region, with similar approaches being adopted or explored in Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile and Ecuador.

In Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, the mayor’s office recently announced the construction of the country’s first mega-prison, modelled after CECOT. The city’s mayor, Federico Gutiérrez, said the prison will have a capacity for more than 1,300 inmates under strict security measures.

The heartland of Pablo Escobar’s Medellín cartel in the 1990s, the city has witnessed a spike in armed gang violence in recent years. Mayor Gutiérrez says the prison, which is set to be completed in 2027, will use technology to prevent inmates from communicating – part of efforts to combat extortion, which often originates in prisons.

Costa Rica’s move to establish a version of CECOT is a reaction to a growing homicide rate, one that’s attributed to gang violence. Chile’s motivations are similar, as are Ecuador’s. In the latter country, the incursion of criminal organisations has been linked to a rise in the homicide rate from six per 100,000 people in 2018 to 38 in 2024, with a record high of 47 in 2023.

The CECOT model ‘promises rapid reductions in gang violence, but does so by normalising mass detention, weakened judicial oversight and sweeping emergency powers,’ says Jonathan Hafetz, an officer of the IBA Human Rights Law Committee. ‘Over time, such measures risk entrenching a system in which public security is pursued at the expense of due process and human rights, with long-term implications for democratic institutions and the rule of law.’

Missile strikes by US armed forces on small vessels allegedly involved in drug smuggling in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean are a further example of extraordinary state power. These attacks are increasing in frequency, with the US having carried out at least 45 strikes since autumn 2025 in an attempt to combat drug trafficking. The strikes have killed at least 157 people as of mid-March.

There’s increased collaboration too between the US and the security forces of regional governments aimed at disrupting drug cartel activity. In March, US and local forces bombed what was allegedly ‘a drug trafficker’s camp’ near Ecuador’s border with Colombia. Later in the month, the Ecuadorean government announced the deployment of over 75,000 police officers and soldiers to four provinces of the country facing cartel violence. It has also declared a night-time curfew in these areas. Ecuadorean Interior Minister John Reimberg told residents that the government was ‘at war’ with the cartels.

International deterrent

‘Mechanisms like the International Criminal Court [ICC] offer an important avenue for accountability when governments commit widespread abuses in the name of combating gangs,’ says Hafetz, who’s a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Center for Democracy.

In 2025, Rodrigo Duterte, the former President of the Philippines, was arrested and surrendered to the ICC. There he faces charges of crimes against humanity for murder and attempted murder in the context of his ‘war on drugs’ campaign, during his time as Mayor of Davao City and later as President. His lawyer says that Duterte maintains his innocence.

Abovyan says the ICC is an important tool in the battle against impunity for crimes that are committed by state actors under the shield of combating gang activity. ‘The investigation and the arrest of Duterte was a significant step towards setting a stage for accountability for heads of states whose prosecution is not likely [to take place at] the domestic level,’ she says, adding that the ICC proceedings are ‘an important deterrent for any state leader that may engage in extrajudicial killings at a scale that can be characterised as a crime against humanity.’ This is especially important, she says, at a time when certain jurisdictions are adopting harsh measures to combat crime and gang activity, as there’s a need to address the question of how far such actions can go.

However, the ICC is ‘a court of last resort’ and ‘was not designed to police organised crime itself,’ says Hafetz. Its involvement in policing organised crime ‘risks politicisation, limited enforcement and tensions with domestic sovereignty,’ he says.

Where states are unwilling or unable to combat gang criminality that meets the criteria of a Rome Statute crime, or where authorities use measures to do so that reach the gravity of international crimes, ‘then the ICC would be able to assess the situation and determine whether it could/should assert jurisdiction to proceed to trial,’ says Sutherland, a barrister at 9 Bedford Row Chambers in London. Regardless, ‘the primary responsibility for addressing all criminal activity, including international crimes, lies with domestic authorities,’ she says. Hafetz agrees, and highlights that ‘the challenge is to harness international criminal law to deter state violence without relying on it as a primary tool for addressing gang activity.’

Ann Deslandes is a freelance journalist based in Mexico. She can be contacted at anndeslandesconsult@gmail.com