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A new player<\/span> in the U.S. military\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Though details continue to emerge from the operation, which set off a spasm of violence<\/a> that left at least 70 people dead, some of the information that led Mexican security forces to Nemesio \u201cEl Mencho\u201d Oseguera Cervantes was delivered by a new Joint Interagency Task Force called Counter Cartel, based out of Southern Arizona.<\/p>\n The outfit operates out of Fort Huachuca, a military intelligence hub nestled in a rugged mountain chain 15 miles north of the U.S.\u2013Mexico border. According to media reports, the task force, staffed by a combination of some 300 military and civilian employees<\/a>, provided its Mexican counterparts with a \u201cdetailed target package<\/a>\u201d in the run-up to Sunday\u2019s operation. The CIA also provided key support for the mission.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s domestic homeland security agenda<\/a> and his lethal drug war operations abroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n Known internally as JIATF-CC, the task force is part of the U.S. Military\u2019s 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 the Southern Command, NORTHCOM\u2019s counterpart in the Western Hemisphere, as well the Pentagon\u2019s Special Operations Command, to conduct the kinds of targeted killing missions long associated with the war on terror against targets in Latin America.<\/p>\n To date, the military has conducted more than 40 airstrikes<\/a> against alleged drug traffickers, 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\u2019s Mexico operation is distinct for its focus much closer to U.S. soil.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the Trump administration has done more than its predecessors is give NORTHCOM a hugely bigger role,\u201d said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With that newfound stature has come a greater level of secrecy over what, exactly, the command is up to \u2014 and whether its operations might spill back over the border into the U.S.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 the law restricting military involvement<\/a> in domestic policing<\/a> \u2014 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt freaks me out when I talk to oversight staff,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re just not getting answers.\u201d<\/p>\n In a sparse January press release<\/a>, 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 \u201cidentify, disrupt, and dismantle cartel operations posing a threat to the United States along the U.S.-Mexico border.\u201d<\/p>\n While information on the coordinating center is similarly scant, FBI national security branch operations director Michael Glasheen testified<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Titled \u201cProtecting the American People Against Invasion<\/a>,\u201d the order called on the attorney general and the DHS secretary to \u201cjointly establish Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) in all States nationwide.\u201d Their shared mission would be to \u201cend the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States\u201d and \u201cdismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the order made no mention of the U.S. military, Glasheen\u2019s testimony confirmed the Pentagon had joined the HSTF mission.<\/p>\n \u201cThis task force construct is the first of its kind,\u201d he told lawmakers, taking a \u201cwhole-of-government\u201d approach and \u201cconsolidating all of U.S. law enforcement, military, and intelligence efforts into a targeted effort in combatting these threats.\u201d According to Glasheen, individual task forces are led by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, the powerful investigative wing<\/a> of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n In addition to more than 8,500 federal agents and officers, hundreds of analysts and legal attach\u00e9s 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, \u201cserves as the primary federal coordinating entity to align law enforcement, defense, and intelligence efforts.\u201d<\/p>\nScant Public Information<\/strong><\/h2>\n