For years, the most dangerous drug lord on earth watched American presidents come and go – and kept shipping fentanyl north.
El Mencho moved rockets. He moved armored convoys. He put bounties on soldiers. He built a private hospital in the Mexican mountains to treat his kidney disease while his poison killed American kids in every zip code.
Then Donald Trump came back to the White House – and started building a trap the cartel boss never saw coming.
How Trump's Total Elimination Strategy Dismantled the Jalisco Cartel Before the Raid
Day One. That's when it started.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order designating CJNG – El Mencho's Jalisco New Generation Cartel – a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
That designation wasn't ceremonial. It was a kill switch.
It allowed the Pentagon, the DEA, the Treasury, and U.S. Northern Command to treat the cartel the same way they treat ISIS – with intelligence assets, financial warfare, and coordinated strike capability.
Attorney General Pam Bondi followed with a policy of "total elimination" – not just disrupting cartels, but destroying them completely.
By March 2025, El Mencho's son and heir apparent Ruben Oseguera-Gonzalez – "El Menchito" – was sentenced in federal court to life in prison plus 30 years, with $6 billion in proceeds forfeited.
His brother Antonio "Tony Montana" was extradited to the United States and charged with cartel leadership. His right-hand financial operator was separately convicted and sentenced to 30 years.
Then, just 72 hours before Mexican soldiers closed in on El Mencho's mountain hideout in Tapalpa, Treasury sanctions hit Kovay Gardens – a CJNG-controlled resort in Puerto Vallarta that had been funneling $300 million a year directly into the cartel's war chest.
By the time the predawn raid launched on February 22, El Mencho had no heir, no money pipeline, and no information blackout – U.S. intelligence had already put together a complete target package.
The Mexican military executed the mission. U.S. intelligence told them exactly where to go.
El Mencho died in a helicopter on the way to Mexico City.
Bongino: The Donroe Doctrine Means Trump Won't Stop at El Mencho
The cartel didn't take it quietly.
Within hours, CJNG gunmen erected more than 250 roadblocks across 20 Mexican states, burned buses, torched convenience stores, and put a bounty of 20,000 pesos on every soldier's head. American tourists were stranded in Puerto Vallarta. Twenty-five National Guard members died in the chaos. El Mencho's top lieutenant – "El Tuli" – was hunted down and killed the same afternoon.
The mainstream media called it blowback. Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino called it proof the strategy is working.
"I don't know why people think he's kidding," Bongino said Monday on Fox News. "He has shown no evidence that he's going to back down at all."
Bongino framed the operation as a direct extension of what he calls the "Donroe Doctrine" – Trump's updated Monroe Doctrine that puts the entire Western Hemisphere on notice.
The cartel's reach has expanded beyond street-level distribution, Bongino warned, to criminal organizations capable of dominating entire neighborhoods and killing at a scale that dwarfs anything seen in prior decades.
Trump, he said, sees it clearly: "He is not going to let people set up shop in Central, South America, Cuba and elsewhere."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed U.S. intelligence support in a Sunday statement, calling El Mencho "a top target for the Mexican and United States government as one of the top traffickers of fentanyl into our homeland."
El Chapo, El Mayo, El Menchito – Why the Fentanyl Cartel Succession Always Ends the Same Way
Here's what you have to understand about cartel violence after a kingpin falls.
When Ovidio Guzmán – El Chapo's son – was arrested in Culiacán in January 2023, cartel gunmen deployed .50 caliber machine guns and truck-mounted platforms, shot down military aircraft, and killed ten soldiers in a single night.
That looked like chaos too.
Today, El Chapo's sons are in federal prison. El Mayo Zambada – the Sinaloa co-founder who ran parallel operations for decades – is in U.S. custody awaiting trial.
The pattern is identical every time: violence erupts, the media declares the war unwinnable, and then the bodies pile up on the wrong side.
El Mencho built his cartel with Genghis Khan tactics – total conquest, total terror, wipe out the opposition and use the carnage as a warning. That strategy made CJNG the most feared criminal organization in Mexico. It also made it a target that Trump took seriously from the moment he took office.
There is no clear successor. El Menchito is serving life plus 30 years. Tony Montana is in U.S. custody. El Tuli is dead. What's left is a succession war among regional commanders – and those wars end with more cartel bosses in handcuffs or body bags.
Trump put it plainly after the operation: "Mexico must step up their effort on Cartels and Drugs." He wasn't celebrating. He was issuing the next order.
Sources:
- Madison Colombo, "Bongino warns Trump won't 'back down' from cartels under new 'Donroe Doctrine,'" Fox News, February 24, 2026.
- "Trump's 'total elimination' strategy paved way for fall of cartel kingpin 'El Mencho,'" Fox News, February 23, 2026.
- "Major drug lord 'El Mencho' killed in Mexican military operation with US intelligence support," Fox News, February 23, 2026.
- Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary Statement on El Mencho Operation, X, February 22, 2026.
- "25 Mexican National Guard troops dead in Jalisco after killing of notorious cartel leader 'El Mencho,'" CBS News, February 23, 2026.
- DEA.gov, "Cartels – El Menchito Sentencing," Drug Enforcement Administration, March 7, 2025.
- "Violence breaks out after 'El Chapo' son detained, Mexican authorities say," PBS NewsHour, January 6, 2023.
