Terry Cole, a Latin American hawk, nominated as new head of the DEA
With over two decades in the anti-drug agency, he undertook missions in Colombia and Afghanistan and was regional chief for Mexico, Canada, and Central America. His appointment threatens to further strain relations with the Mexican government
More than two decades of experience; field missions in Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico City, and an iron-fisted discourse against drug-trafficking networks south of the border. These are the credentials of Terrance “Terry” Cole, Donald Trump’s nominee as the next administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). “Together we will save lives and make America safe again,” the Republican announced this week on Truth Social, his social network. The appointment, which still needs to be ratified, reinforces Washington’s hardline turn and sends a direct message to Latin America, from an old acquaintance. Cole retired as regional head for Mexico, Central America, and Canada in 2020 and is returning to join the team of hawks that Trump has formed to start a new chapter in the war on drugs: fighting cartels as terrorist organizations.
Cole’s arrival reinforces the narrative that drug trafficking is a “plague” that comes from beyond U.S. borders and poses a threat to Washington’s national security, with the complicity of Mexican authorities. “We are seeing Mexico become a training ground for terror,” he said in an interview last October. “Most foreign fighters and their organizations come to Mexico, establish base camps that allow them to hone their capabilities to bring these poisons to the United States, and now use military-type intelligence against American officials,” reads an excerpt that has been picked up by the Mexican media.
During his first week in office, Trump issued an executive order declaring cartels as terrorist organizations. The executive action targets some of the most powerful criminal forces in the world, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and mentions by name criminal groups such as El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua. The first 10 deportees that the new White House administration sent to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, were precisely alleged members of the Tren de Aragua, an organization that has gained strength throughout the continent due to the mass exodus of Venezuelan migrants.
Although the designations have not been formalized, the measure opens a wide range of actions that the George W. Bush administration announced as part of the “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks in 2001. It tightens the noose on the financial structures of organized crime, expands the discretion with which U.S. authorities can operate, and places the fight against drug trafficking within the orbit of national security. It also poses risks to Mexico’s sovereignty, because U.S. laws against terrorism protect the intervention of the military in other countries, despite it being a violation of international law.
Much has been made of the growing role of the U.S. military in the new anti-drug paradigm promoted by Trump and how the DEA — until now the main institution against drug trafficking — was going to adapt. Cole seems to embrace the idea. The next director of the agency blames the “open borders” policy for the expansion of the cartels and has openly spoken out in favor of the intervention of the armed forces to stop the flow of fentanyl and other drugs. “We have serious national security concerns on our southern border as it relates to Mexico,” he said.
Cole began his career overseas as an official in Colombia, although there is little public information about his missions in South America. Since leaving the agency, he has repeatedly accused the Mexican government of colluding with criminal groups and of failing to combat organized crime, and has said that Mexican organizations pose a greater danger than Colombian groups. “The Mexican drug cartels work hand-in-hand with corrupt Mexican government officials at high levels,” Cole said in an interview with the ultraconservative website Breitbart News in 2020, the same year he left the Mexico office.
In that role, the special agent was deployed in the Mexican capital during the first Culiacanazo, the failed attempt to capture Ovidio Guzmán, one of Joaquín “El Chapo” Gúzman’s sons, in Culiacán, the historic stronghold of the Sinaloa Cartel. He has also been quite vocal about the sophistication of clandestine laboratories for the manufacture of synthetic drugs, the alleged financial networks operating between Mexico and China to launder the profits from fentanyl trafficking, and the lack of action against those responsible for the murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985, an incident that has since marked the DEA’s agenda toward Latin America. Cole participated in operations in Mexico during the time in which the Secretary of Security for Mexico City was Omar García Harfuch, President Claudia Sheinbaum’s current security czar.
The appointment threatens to further strain the turbulent relationship between the DEA and the Mexican government. The administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador had highly public clashes with the anti-drug agency, accusing it of being behind a wave of leaks about alleged investigations against him and members of his inner circle for links to drug trafficking. The investigations never reached the courts and were never formalized. “By what right do you investigate a legal, legitimately constituted government of an independent country? Is there a global government? Isn’t each country independent and sovereign?” López Obrador asked last year.
These differences have gone beyond mere statements. Mexican authorities have limited the scope of operation of foreign agents in recent years and have isolated the DEA from bilateral security cooperation, considering it behind the scenes as a dissident actor that constantly destabilizes the efforts of both countries to collaborate against drug trafficking. Cole decided to abandon his position in Mexico in that context. That animosity has been inherited by the government of Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s successor. “It will not be like before,” the Mexican president warned about the power that U.S. agents wielded in the past. “Coordination, collaboration, information, but without interference,” said the president on Wednesday, when the media questioned her about Cole’s arrival.
Before joining the DEA, Cole served in the Naval Academy as a blue and gold officer and volunteered at U.S. Navy schools. In 22 years with the agency, he served as a representative to the National Security Council and chief of staff to the head of global operations, among other positions. Since his retirement, he has held positions in the private financial sector. In 2023, he took over as secretary of public safety in Virginia, after being invited by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, with the goal of combating the public health crisis and fentanyl overdose deaths.
Cole was not Trump’s first choice to head the DEA. Chad Chronister, a sheriff and politician from Florida, declined the incoming president’s invitation last December after his nomination sparked criticism among conservatives for his performance during the pandemic and the positions he took on immigrant deportations. The fight against fentanyl has brought Cole a new job opportunity, the most important of his career. If confirmed by the Republican-majority Senate, he will replace Anne Milgram, the DEA administrator during the Joe Biden administration.
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