Colombia's 'El Tigre' Takes the Fight to the Cartels, With Trump's Washington at His Side

Colombia's new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, means business in his war against the cartels. Known by the nickname 'El Tigre' — the Tiger — he was voted in on a law-and-order ticket, and his offensive against armed groups appears to be paying dividends not just in Colombia but in Washington too.

Recently he arrived at the Barranquilla police command in the early hours of the morning as 587 police officers and soldiers raided 50 locations across the Caribbean port city and its suburbs in Operation Blindaje 360. A few days earlier, Colombian police had intercepted a recording of 'Keko', the alleged leader of a gang called 'Los del Freseo', boasting that de la Espriella had nothing on him. 'The Tiger's got nothing. Let him come out, and we'll put lead in him,' Keko allegedly said on the recording.

Then, before dawn, the president had tracked him down and was face to face with him, all caught on tape. According to a video released by his presidential office, El Tigre told Keko he was 'a tough guy on the phone' but that the fear on his face matched that of his many victims. The sweep ended with 72 arrests.

On taking office, de la Espriella scrapped his leftist predecessor Gustavo Petro's 'total peace' policy, which had pursued engagement and peace talks with drug traffickers and armed groups. Critics had long argued that the policy left Colombia more vulnerable to organized crime, while Venezuelan cartels filled the space left by weakened law-enforcement control.

Before taking office, he had announced he would dismantle key elements of that policy and reactivate arrest warrants against members of illegal armed groups. On August 25 his hard-right government announced plans to classify guerrilla fighters, drug traffickers and other criminal groups as 'terrorists'.

Nearly three months into his term, the 48-year-old lawyer claims more than 32,000 arrests. In an October 12 address he put the tally at 32,503 arrests, 33 ringleaders taken out of action and 679 drug-production sites destroyed or disabled. He has signed more than 100 extradition orders, including five for former armed-group peace negotiators wanted in the United States whose handovers the previous government had frozen.

Last month he personally handed a guerrilla boss to DEA agents with his hands and feet shackled. Geovany Andrés Rojas, alias 'Araña', is alleged to have led the 'Comandos de la Frontera' dissidents and to have supplied Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel; he now faces narco-terrorism charges in Southern California.

'The option of dialogue is completely exhausted,' de la Espriella told troops after his August 7 inauguration. In August, Colombia became the 19th member of President Donald Trump's Shield of the Americas coalition, and War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Bogotá had authorized 'joint military operations to destroy terrorists and terror networks domestically'. The administration has pledged $1 billion in security aid, pending congressional approval, and Marine General Francis Donovan, head of US Southern Command, has toured Colombian bases.

However, Vice President José Manuel Restrepo drew a clear line on the role American forces would play inside Colombia. Speaking to Fox News Digital, he said that while Colombia is embracing Trump's push for a new security alliance across the Western Hemisphere, Colombian troops — not US forces — will carry out operations against the country's armed groups.

The offensive reaches deep into the countryside. Conflict monitor ACLED counted August as the deadliest month for clashes between security forces and armed groups since it began tracking Colombia in 2018. In late August the president warned FARC dissident chief Iván Mordisco: 'When you least expect it, a bomb is going to fall on you.' Two days later, he walked among the bagged bodies of 23 suspected dissidents at an army base in Guaviare.

A dual US-Colombian citizen who lived in Miami before running for president, de la Espriella has brought Colombia into Trump's anti-cartel coalition. According to Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Stimson Center in Washington and a former White House South America director, the last few years were an outlier; for decades, close US-Colombia security ties were the norm.