Will send teams of assassins to kill Mexico drug lords, Trump told aides

Former President Donald Trump has vowed to send “assassination squads” of US special forces into Mexico on covert missions against the heads of drug cartels that are allegedly operating from the country.

According to a report by Rolling Stone, Trump, who is seeking re-election in the upcoming US presidential polls, put forward the idea of sending the assassination squads as he believed that the US military has “tougher killers” to “wage war” on Mexico’s drug cartels amid the US’s growing fentanyl crisis.

During his first term as president, Trump even thought it was possible to bomb the cartels’ drug labs, and then potentially pin the strikes on another country, according to his former defence secretary, Mark Esper.

While campaigning for a second term, Trump has vowed to “make appropriate use of Special Forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations”.

During some of the conversations with his allies, Trump likened these proposals to the 2019 military raid that he ordered that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Rolling Stone reported.

Talking to his close allies, Trump floated the idea of deploying special operations units that would carry out assassinations of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels – with or without the consent of its government.

During the discussion with his allies, Trump questioned why these assassination missions had not been done before. He argued that eliminating the heads of cartels would go a long way toward hobbling their operations and striking fear into the hearts of “the kingpins”.

Trump, however, did not reveal the details of his plans, including how many such squads or troops he would be willing to send to Mexico and the level of cooperation with the Mexican government.

Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on this issue, Rolling Stone said in its report.