President Donald Trump’s government has taken a tough new step against Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. They have officially called the Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist group. But the group the US says Maduro leads is not really a normal cartel at all.
This new label was published on Monday. It is another part of Trump’s growing effort to stop drug trafficking into the United States. About a week before this, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Cartel de los Soles was responsible for violent acts in the region.
The timing is serious because Trump is also thinking about possible military action against Venezuela. He has not fully committed to it, but he also has not ruled it out. The US military has already built up a large presence near the Caribbean and has been striking boats accused of carrying drugs. More than eighty people have been killed in these operations.
The name Cartel de los Soles has existed since the 1990s. People in Venezuela used it to talk about top military officers who were getting rich through drug trafficking. Over time, especially under former President Hugo Chávez and then Maduro, the meaning became wider. It began to include corrupt police, government officials and even people making money through illegal mining and smuggling fuel. The “suns” in the name come from the shiny badges that high military officers wear on their uniforms.
In 2020 the US took this loose idea and turned it into an official accusation. The US Justice Department said Maduro and his close allies were running a drug trafficking organization and charged them with narcoterrorism.
Experts say the Cartel de los Soles is not a real group. It has no members who meet, no structure and no clear leadership. It is more like a broad nickname for corruption.
Maduro’s government strongly denies the existence of this cartel. They say the US made it up to justify future military action against Venezuela.
Until this year the US only used the foreign terrorist label for groups like ISIS and al-Qaida. But the Trump administration expanded the rule and added several Latin American criminal groups to the list. They blamed these groups for running the boats that US forces have been attacking, though they rarely provide evidence.
Some people think the US military moves are not only about drugs. They think it may also be an attempt to weaken Maduro’s twenty six year political hold. Venezuela’s political opposition, backed by the US, has again started calling for Maduro to be removed from office. This adds to the belief that the military buildup may have a bigger goal.
Trump does not accept Maduro as Venezuela’s president. Maduro is now in his third term, even though many reports say the opposition candidate actually won the last election by a wide margin. Maduro and his officials have also been accused many times of human rights abuses, especially after the 2024 election.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the new terror label gives the US many new options. He did not explain what those options are. He also would not say whether the US might strike targets inside Venezuela. He simply said nothing is off the table and nothing is set in stone.
Some US officials believe Maduro’s government cannot survive long. They say Trump has been listening closely to intelligence reports. These reports suggest that Maduro and top Venezuelan officials are becoming more nervous as the US continues its strikes. According to these officials, Maduro has been trying harder to reach out to the US through various channels, but Trump has not allowed anyone to speak to him officially.
The 2020 indictment accused Maduro and other top officials of working with Colombian rebels and Venezuelan military members to send huge amounts of cocaine to the United States. The idea was to use drugs as a weapon. Colombia is the biggest cocaine producer in the world, and rebel groups often used the Venezuela border area as a safe zone with the help of corrupt Venezuelan forces.
Maduro denies all these accusations. The US has now increased its reward for his arrest to fifty million dollars.
Maduro claims the US is creating a false story about drug trafficking to push him out of power. He points to a United Nations report that says only a small amount of Colombian cocaine actually passes through Venezuela.
Still, the US Treasury Department placed sanctions on the Cartel de los Soles in July. They said Maduro and top officials were using the power of the government and the military to help drug traffickers. The US also says this cartel has supported the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the Mexican Sinaloa cartel. Both of those groups were added to the terror list earlier this year.