President Donald Trump has secretly signed an order directing the military to take action against drug-smuggling cartels and other criminal groups from Latin America, according to a report in The New York Times.The newspaper’s report on Friday appeared to confirm statements earlier in the week from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who signalled the US military had approval to take aggressive action against cartels.“It allows us to now target what they’re operating and to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever … to target these groups if we have an opportunity to do it,” Rubio said on Thursday.“We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organisations, not simply drug-dealing organisations.”The news, however, has spurred concern that the military could be deployed within the US and abroad to combat sanctioned criminal groups like the Sinaloa Cartel, Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).The Trump administration has designated such entities as “foreign terrorist organisations”, putting them in the same category as groups like al-Qaeda, ISIL (ISIS) and Boko Haram.But a US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the news agency Reuters that no military action appeared imminent.Mexico responds to intervention fearsStill, during a Friday morning news conference, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum faced questions about the risk of US intervention on her country’s soil.She acknowledged that her government had received information about the coming order from the Trump administration. Advertisement But Sheinb …
