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marco rubio
The International Criminal Court Is Under Attack
If the attack from Putin's Russia and the US Trump administration succeeds, it will produce a disaster not only for the rule of law, but for the cause of human rights.
Oct 10, 2026
On October 9, only hours after the announcement of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a former judge on the International Criminal Court, the Trump administration imposed its latest sanctions on the global judicial body. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “we will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.”
When the ICC became operational in 2002, it represented a major breakthrough for the human rights groups that had campaigned for it. The new organization had the mandate to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and, after 2018, the crime of aggression. Once nations ratified the ICC’s authorizing document, the Rome Statute, they took responsibility for arresting these individuals and submitting them to the court for trial. Designed to complement, rather than to replace, national criminal justice systems, the ICC could prosecute cases only when countries were unwilling or unable to do so. A total of 125 countries―nearly two-thirds of the world’s nations―have ratified the Rome Statute.
Since its founding, the ICC (headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands) has acted to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the world’s gravest atrocities. Its actions included opening 34 cases (some with more than one suspect), holding 17 different investigations across four continents, issuing 61 arrest warrants, and, thus far, issuing 13 convictions and four acquittals.
Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute.From its inception, however, US officials were wary of the ICC.
In the United States, President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute, but refused to present it to the US Senate for ratification, warning that it had “significant flaws,” including the inability to “protect US officials.” His successor, George W. Bush, “unsigned” the treaty in 2002 and signed US legislation authorizing military force to liberate any American nationals it held for crimes. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he denounced the ICC before the United Nations General Assembly and imposed economic sanctions and visa restrictions on top ICC officials for any effort to investigate the behavior of US personnel in Afghanistan.
Russian officials, too, soon realized that enforcement of international law threatened them. Although, initially, the Russian government signed the Rome Statute and participated constructively in the ICC, it withdrew its signature after Ukraine appealed to the ICC in 2014 and 2015 to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The ICC did initiate a preliminary inquiry that, after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022 and Russia’s murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war in Bucha, expanded into a formal investigation. In 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.
Denying any wrongdoing in Bucha, the Russian government also dismissed the charge of kidnapping as “outrageous.” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, threatened a Russian hypersonic missile attack upon the ICC headquarters.
Meanwhile, the assault on the ICC escalated. Although US President Joseph Biden scrapped Trump’s sanctions on the court and authorized sharing information with it during investigations of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, he and numerous officials of other nations denounced the ICC’s November 2024 war crimes arrest warrant for top Israeli officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assailed what he called “the antisemitic decision” of the ICC and said that Israel refused to comply with it.
With Trump’s reelection, the campaign to destroy the ICC went into high gear. In February 2025, he imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor. That August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, labeling the court “a national security threat,” added ICC judges to the sanctions list. In late 2025, a top Trump administration official told Reuters that there was “growing concern” that “the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them.” That was “unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.” The ICC, he said, had been informed that, unless it amended its founding document to ensure that it would not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, new, very punishing US sanctions would be imposed on the court.
The Russian government also ramped up its attack. In December 2025, a Russian court, retaliating for the ICC’s arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova, convicted the ICC prosecutor and eight ICC judges, in absentia, of “unlawful prosecution,” sentencing them to terms of imprisonment ranging from three and a half to 15 years.
In July 2026, Rubio announced what the US State Department called “a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to US sovereignty.” It would “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate” and destroy the court “brick by brick.” That August, imposing additional sanctions on court officials, Rubio proclaimed “our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court.” Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called on Latin American and Caribbean governments to sever their ties with the ICC.
Many observers, of course, were appalled by the Trump administration’s behavior. The European Union immediately expressed its backing for the ICC, while Germany’s foreign minister declared that the court made the world “safer and more just.” In a biting article, Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued that “the administration’s real goal is to secure impunity for war crimes.”
Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute. The number of withdrawals now stands at five, including Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The latter three are ruled by military juntas allied with Russia.
As the Nobel committee warned when announcing the Peace Prize, the “judges and institutions of international law are under political attack.”
If the attack succeeds, it will produce a disaster not only for the rule of law, but for the cause of human rights.
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After Former ICC Judge Wins Nobel Peace Prize, US Hits Court With New Sanctions
One US campaigner declared that "the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the most important development in international justice in half a century."
Oct 09, 2026
Not long after a former International Criminal Court judge on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize for "ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted," US President Donald Trump—who has long sought the award—continued his administration's "campaign to dismantle" the ICC with new sanctions.
"Globalist experts that are an ocean away... want the International Criminal Court to do more, including the prosecution of American citizens and service members that are defending their country," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed in a video posted on social media.
"They want to prosecute border patrol agents that are protecting our nation's borders, and they want to prosecute our elected leaders that are ensuring our national security," he continued. "President Donald Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans."
"We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling their ability to operate against us, because our message is clear: The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC," Rubio said. "Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all."
"Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC—and we expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, to rein in this rogue court," he added. "If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC piece by piece until Americans are threatened no longer."
The United States has never been a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the Hague-based tribunal to investigate genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Since 2002, a federal law known as the Hague Invasion Act has empowered the president to prevent the ICC from detaining US or allied personnel. Although the court has probed alleged crimes by US citizens, it has never prosecuted anyone from the United States.
Trump and Rubio have been particularly hostile toward the ICC and imposed a series of sanctions since the president returned to power last year. They are especially angry about the court's 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who welcomed Friday's sanctions announcement—and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over their ongoing US-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.
Israel's war on Gaza has killed over 74,000 Palestinians and has been widely denounced as genocide, including by a United Nations commission that was chaired by South African jurist Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. In addition to serving on that panel and the ICC, she has been a High Court of South Africa judge, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda president, and UN high commissioner for human rights. She remains an International Court of Justice ad hoc judge.
Trump has publicly demanded the prize for years—while threatening to invade various nations, abducting a foreign leader, killing hundreds of people by blowing up dozens of boats on the high seas, and bombing more countries than any other US commander in chief this century, including Iran, where his and Israel's illegal war is ongoing. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who often ridicules the president, even compiled a supercut of his frequent comments about the award on Thursday, in anticipation of Friday's announcement.
After Pillay was revealed as the winner, Trump predictably attacked her. However, rather than commenting directly, he shared a post on his Truth Social platform in which US lawyer David I. Schoen claimed that the selection committee "shamed itself beyond repair and demeaned the once great Nobel Peace Prize" by giving it to Pillay, calling her "an unabashed hater of America and Israel" who has "celebrated terrorists and rewarded Hamas."
Schoen also suggested that Trump should receive the prize for the Abraham Accords, as well as because "he is making best efforts to end the Russia/Ukraine war, to stop Iran, the number one sponsor of international terrorism, and he is trying to rebuild Gaza despite the terrorists' best efforts to control it."
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Friday that the US leader "played a historic role in advancing peace in South Asia. His timely intervention helped bring Pakistan and India back from the brink and secure a ceasefire, that is holding till today. In recognition of his outstanding contribution, Pakistan had nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize."
Earlier this year, shortly after US troops invaded Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gifted her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Trump. Pillay joked to those applauding her on Friday that "if you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump."
"Navi Pillay has dedicated her career to defending human rights, fighting impunity and strengthening international justice," Alexis Deswaef, president of the International Federation for Human Rights, said Friday. "At a time when those who uphold international law are increasingly under attack, this award is a powerful reminder that justice is essential to peace, and that those who defend it must be protected."
While also celebrating Pillay's win, Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard ripped the US war against the ICC on social media: "I am writing this from Nuremberg, where 80 years ago, American judges and lawyers played a crucial role in trying the highest Nazi leaders and commanders, and establishing the foundational principles of international criminal law. 80 years later, what a betrayal. The Trump administration's decision is appalling. But ultimately, it is not about them. It is about us."
The United States' "grotesque decision is a test for all European governments which have been tiptoeing, shying away from confronting and responding to the predatory actions from the Trump administration," said the French human rights leader. "They now need to rise to the moment. History demands of Europe that it stands for international justice and its institutions. There is only one possible response: impose immediately blocking orders. The US sanctions cannot and should not be implemented on European territory. This is not a USA moment. This is an 'Us' moment. Let's rise to it. Because humanity must win."
Isabelle Hayslip, advocacy associate at the US-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), also highlighted that the European Union "has a tool built exactly for when rogue states use sanctions to further political aims: a blocking statute that can shield the court and Europeans from US sanctions."
"If states won't act now to protect the court as they have repeatedly vowed to do, then when?" Hayslip asked. "Every day they wait, European banks move closer to abandoning the court out of fear of Washington."
The European Commission—the EU's executive arm—said Friday that the bloc "has been a constant supporter" of the court, called the new sanctions "deeply regrettable," and pledged to "work closely with the ICC to ensure it continues to operate effectively."
"And we remain committed to working with all 125 states that are parties to the Rome Statute to preserve and respect its independence so that it can continue its vital mission," the commission continued. "As there is a six-month delay before the measures are applicable, there is room for dialogue. The EU stands ready to take any necessary measures to enable the court to carry out its work both in investigating and prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity, and to protect the interests of EU operators within the single market."
Noting that "ICC prosecutors also have tools when a state intimidates or retaliates to stop court officials from doing their jobs: The Rome Statute makes this a crime," DAWN's Hayslip argued that "they should investigate and prosecute Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and other senior administration officials for obstructing justice."
Her organization and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide previously took legal action in US court, suing over Trump's related Executive Order 14203 in July.
"In applying tools reserved for the most serious criminals to the world's only permanent international court, the US is claiming the power to jail for 20 years Americans who represent a victim, submit evidence, or handle payroll for the court," Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director, stressed Friday. "We have taken the Trump administration to court, because such brazen declarations trample the fundamental constitutional rights of millions of Americans. No president has that power."
The group's executive director, Omar Shakir, said that "by sanctioning the entire International Criminal Court, the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the most important development in international justice in half a century."
Shakir warned that "US sanctions threaten to shut the last viable road to justice for millions of victims of serious crimes, from Gaza and Sudan to Afghanistan and Ukraine—all to shield Israeli officials who have perpetrated a genocide from justice."
The ICC itself forcefully condemned the Trump administration's latest "unprecedented" sanctions as "an attempt to obstruct the course of justice" as well as "an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law."
ICC President Tomoko Akane vowed that "the court will continue to fully discharge its mandate, with independence and impartiality, acting only on the basis of the law and the evidence, for the sake of the countless victims of grave crimes."
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'It Was All Quid Pro Quo': GOP Donor Goes on the Record to Accuse Kimberly Guilfoyle of Corruption
"She was so desperate for me to send that $100,000, she said, 'If you do this for me... I will be your ride or die in Trump World."
Oct 08, 2026
A former Republican congressional candidate and donor to President Donald Trump's campaign went on the record Thursday to level allegations of corruption against Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Trump-appointed US Ambassador to Greece.
Appearing on ABC News' "Good Morning America," Eric Deters said that Guilfoyle offered him access to top officials in the Trump administration if he paid off her $100,000 credit card debt.
"It was all quid pro quo," Deters said. "She was so desperate for me to send that $100,000, she said, 'If you do this for me... I will be your ride or die in Trump World."
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, is facing growing ethics questions after a former Trump donor accused her of offering access to top officials in exchange for cash. Jay O’Brien reports. https://t.co/WqkSyPxamv
— Good Morning America (@GMA) October 8, 2026
Deters' claims are backed up by text messages published on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, which show Guilfoyle begging him to help pay off her American Express bill ahead of her July 2025 confirmation hearing.
In the texts, Guilfoyle gave Deters pointers on how to help her without leaving a paper trail, informing him that the payment "won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express."
In an interview with the Journal, Deters said that he ultimately didn't send Guilfoyle the money, as she'd made promises of favors to him in the past without ever delivering.
Among other things, the former Trump donor explained, he once offered to pay Guilfoyle $1 million in exchange for securing him an interview on Tucker Carlson's show. While Guilfoyle said she could get Carlson to agree to the interview, she was unable to convince him.
"She never came through on anything," Deters explained.
An attorney representing Guilfoyle told the Journal that she disputed the authenticity of the text messages with Deters, but declined to provide any specifics.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is currently in Greece, refused to comment on the corruption allegations when asked by reporters on Thursday.
"Our job is not to respond every time somebody gives the media something without any advanced warning, without any chance to look at it," Rubio said. "That's not the way you run an organization, and that's not a serious way to conduct the policy of our country. So I'm not going to comment on a story that literally posted a few hours ago."
Rubio bristled at questions about WSJ’s Guilfoyle story before departing Greece. “I’m not going to comment.” Video via @ralexdc https://t.co/MLy2rcihdJ
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) October 8, 2026
Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, wrote in a Wednesday social media post that Guilfoyle's efforts to hide elicit transactions was doomed to failure.
"The Trump cartel can't hide this," Walkinshaw wrote. "Corruption leaves a paper trail. It’s time to Investigate every message and dollar."
Democracy Defenders Action co-founder Norm Eisen, who served as US ambassador to the Czech Republic under President Barack Obama, expressed astonishment at the Guilfoyle texts.
"I was an ambassador myself and I've never seen anything like this," Eisen wrote. "She denies it, but you can smell this one from Athens!"
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Days After Rubio Pulls Visa, Agents in Bolivia 'Kidnap' Attorney General Who Charged 'MAGA's Man in LatAm'
"We denounce before the entire Bolivian population this intervention that is being carried out illegally," said an official from Attorney General Roger Mariaca's office.
Oct 01, 2026
The Bolivia Public Prosecutor's Office on Thursday denounced “the kidnapping of our attorney general” after the country's top law enforcement official, Roger Mariaca, was intercepted and detained at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz, along with a prosecutor from the city.
Observers were quick to note that the arrests took place weeks after Mariaca's office arrested Fernando Cerimedo, a political operative with ties to right-wing campaigns across Latin America.
Cerimedo also has a business partnership with President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale—a connection that helped earn Cerimedo the nickname "MAGA's Man in LatAm."
Marco Antonio Oviedo, Bolivia's interior minister, said the two officials were arrested on suspicion of criminal organization, money laundering, and drug trafficking.
The arrests were carried out with the "cooperation of the US government" as part of the "fight against terrorism," said Oviedo.
They were detained days after the Trump administration revoked their visas and those of more than a dozen other people from Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador.
The US State Department had accused them of corruption and having ties to drug trafficking, similar to allegations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was abducted by US military forces in January.
Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other officials have taken numerous actions that they say are aimed at combating drug trafficking in Latin America, including bombing dozens of alleged drug boats, partnering with countries across the region on military operations, and creating the Shield of the Americas, an alliance with right-wing governments including that of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz that is ostensibly aimed at defeating drug cartels and organized crime.
The Trump administration claimed Mariaca had taken "bribes to facilitate drug trafficking and help violent criminals evade justice." Mariaca denied the accusations on Monday and said his visa had been revoked as part of an effort at "interference" and "political pressure" due to his investigation into Cerimedo.
Cerimedo's arrest in August was in connection with the attempted murder of a lawyer and activist with whom he reportedly had a relationship.
"He's also being investigated for collusion in drug trafficking and other activities during his time as a presidential adviser to Rodrigo Paz," reported journalist Ollie Vargas.
On social media, Ryan Grim of Drop Site News called the detention of Mariaca "fallout from the arrest of Cerimedo," while another observer replied, "That's your Marco Rubio pulling the strings."
After the arrests, a special police unit reportedly searched the Santa Cruz Departmental Prosecutor’s Office, Mariaca's office, and the attorney general's home.
"We denounce before the entire Bolivian population this intervention that is being carried out illegally," Claudia Pardo, the head of communications at the Public Prosecutor's Office, told the press.
Journalist Joseph Bouchard noted that while claiming to fight drug trafficking in Latin America, the Trump administration is "actively protecting allied drug traffickers and criminals," such as former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in 2024 of helping the Sinaloa Cartel import hundreds of tons of drugs into the US. Trump pardoned Hernández last November, weeks before his administration invaded Venezuela and abducted Maduro.
The administration "bankrolled Fernando Cerimedo, who is now jailed in Bolivia for ties to drug trafficking," said Bouchard, "and the US forced Bolivia to jail his prosecutor."
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Alarm Grows Over 'Clearly Illegal' Trump-Rubio Election Meddling in Brazil
"The Trump-Rubio interventions, with the collaboration of the Bolsonaro clan, have made the Flávio campaign into another US regime change operation. This should be defeated."
Sep 30, 2026
Brazilian officials, pro-democracy advocates, and US lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about apparent efforts by President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to interfere in the Latin American country's upcoming election.
Reuters reported Wednesday that Brazil's spy agency "confirmed the existence of interference from the United States as well as Russia" in the presidential election, the first round of which will take place on October 4. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is running for reelection against Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro—who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence under house arrest for orchestrating a coup attempt in 2022.
Democratic lawmakers in the US have raised alarm about the Trump administration's election meddling in Brazil in recent days as the contest approaches. Earlier this week, Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Peter Welch (Vt.), and Tim Kaine (Va.) wrote in a letter to Rubio that "over the course of President Trump’s second term, we have seen US officials engage in a campaign of interference and destabilization in Brazil."
"The administration’s most recent actions point toward an effort to interfere with, and potentially undermine, Brazil's general election in October," the lawmakers wrote. "Senator and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro’s recent Oval Office meeting with President Trump, undertaken while attempting to mitigate a domestic political scandal, underscores the administration's willingness to insert itself in the election."
The senators' letter followed a separate demand by more than 30 Democrats in the US House that Rubio "confirm whether the administration will commit to respecting Brazil’s electoral process and to recognizing its certified outcome." The House Democrats demanded a response from the Trump administration by October 1.
"Particularly given the tragic history of US involvement in the 1964 military coup against Brazil’s democratically elected government at the time, as well as subsequent US support for the resulting military dictatorship," the lawmakers wrote, "the United States has a responsibility to support the democratic institutions that so many Brazilians, across generations, struggled to build."
Trump has been a vocal defender of Flávio Bolsonaro's father, saying he is "not guilty of anything" and describing his prosecution as a "witch hunt"—echoing Trump's attack on investigations into his own effort to subvert the 2020 election in the US. Last year, Trump hit Brazil with a 40% tariff, accusing the country's leaders of "persecuting former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro."
"It was not just a trade maneuver," political scientist Octavio Amorim Neto said of the tariff in an interview published Thursday, noting that "Bolsonarism explicitly applauded [Trump's economic attack], while Brazil’s traditional right did not vigorously defend national sovereignty, saying that everything was Lula’s fault."
Over the summer, Brazil denied visas to two top US State Department officials "whom the Trump administration planned to dispatch on a mission to cast doubt on the fairness and integrity of the country’s electoral system," The Washington Post reported in July.
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times earlier this week that Trump’s intervention in Brazil's electoral process "undermines a basic and generally cherished right to self-determination, as well as the right to democracy itself."
"It is even clearly illegal under the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a signatory," wrote Weisbrot. "The Trump-Rubio interventions, with the collaboration of the Bolsonaro clan, have made the Flávio campaign into another US regime change operation. This should be defeated, for the sake of Brazil and the whole hemisphere."
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This Trump-Rubio Regime Change Operation in Brazil Must Be Thwarted
Trump’s intervention in Brazilian elections undermines a basic and generally cherished right to self-determination, as well as the right to democracy itself. It is even clearly illegal under the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the US is a signatory.
Sep 30, 2026
One of the most important elections in recent Latin American history will take place Sunday in Brazil. Incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has recently been emphasizing the issue of national sovereignty. One reason: The challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, has the strong backing of the Trump administration—and the US has been intervening heavily on his behalf.
In the last few months of Brazil’s election campaign, Trump has met with Bolsonaro at the White House, imposed new tariffs on Brazilian goods and tried to send State Department officials to Brazil. (Both Brazilian and American officials said the presence of Trump administration operatives would cast doubt on the integrity of the voting there.)
A letter last week to Secretary of State Marco Rubio from 31 members of Congress documented additional hostile actions and concluded that “the United States is acting as an agent of interference and destabilization.”
The election is forecast to be very close, and the sovereignty issue could be persuasive for swing voters.
Trump’s intervention undermines a basic and generally cherished right to self-determination, as well as the right to democracy itself. It is even clearly illegal under the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a signatory.
But Brazilians currently have reasons to attach even more urgency to preserving their sovereignty and independence. This can be seen in the recent history of Brazil and Latin America and in the economic impact of political independence on living standards.
Starting with Brazil: Lula was a metalworker and union leader who helped found, and then lead, the Workers Party. He served two consecutive terms as president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and left office with one of the highest approval ratings in the world—83%.
There were compelling reasons for that, which stemmed from the government’s changes in economic and social policy. These changed the lives of tens of millions of people in Brazil. GDP per person, the most basic measure of living standards, grew about four times as fast as it did in the eight years prior to Lula’s presidency. Poverty was reduced by 61% and extreme poverty by 64%. There was also a 57% increase in the real (inflation-adjusted) minimum wage. University enrollment almost doubled.
Lula was able to implement these and other life-changing reforms because he broke with the “Washington consensus” policies that had governed economic decision-making in the region as perhaps never before, from 1980 to 2000. This included economic policies that were often decided at the International Monetary Fund or sometimes other Washington-controlled institutions. The result was a disaster: Those two decades saw the worst long-term economic growth failure in Latin America for more than 100 years.
This historic economic growth collapse helped bring about the election of left-of-center governments in the majority of the region for the first time. As in Brazil, these governments were more independent than the prior regional norm and therefore pursued more progressive and effective economic policies. The turnaround was historic: From 2002 to 2013, the percentage of the population of Latin America living in poverty fell to 28.4 from 45.6 after increasing over the prior two decades.
The independence that these governments were able to establish is what Rubio and Trump appear to most want to abolish. Hence their current efforts at regime change in Brazil. This is the big prize for Rubio. It’s the largest country in Latin America, and a Lula government won’t support the Trump administration in its illegal efforts to control the region. But Lula’s opponent would almost certainly be a solid Trump ally.
That is Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator handpicked by his father Jair Bolsonaro, who was president from 2019 to 2023; he has branded himself “Bolsonaro 2.0.”
Flávio and his team are trying to link Lula to the biggest bank fraud in Brazilian history, which forced a deposit insurance payout of almost $8 billion for about 800,000 victims. But the dirt is actually on Flávio and his allies. He is up to his neck in this scandal. Nothing on Lula.
Bolsonaro 1.0 took a page from the Trump election-denial playbook when he lost the election of 2022 to Lula. He was unable to get enough military commanders to support a decree to prevent Lula from taking office. The nation’s Supreme Court subsequently convicted Bolsonaro of leading an attempted coup. The Brazilian “January 6” was on Jan. 8, 2023, when supporters of the defeated president vandalized Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court and demanded that the military intervene to overturn the election result.
Last year Trump tried to stop the trial of Bolsonaro by slapping Brazil with an additional 40% tariff. Most Brazilians rejected the economic collective punishment as an assault on their national sovereignty, electoral democracy and justice system—which it clearly was. Bolsonaro was convicted and sentenced to prison.
Almost every one of the democratically elected, social democratic governments that came to power in the 21st century faced efforts from Washington to weaken, destabilize or remove it. This reached the level of US-backed coups d’état in Bolivia, Honduras and Haiti. The U.S was also involved in a 2002 coup in Venezuela that was quickly reversed, followed by years of US efforts at regime change there—and later the economic sanctions that killed more than a hundred thousand people, destroying most of the Venezuelan economy in the process. Argentina has also suffered from repeated US interventions that have caused and worsened economic downturns and crises, with serious costs.
Most recently, Trump has increased the economic violence against Cuba, which is Rubio’s foremost target. Cuba’s infant mortality rate has increased 148% since the US began tightening its sanctions, which currently include a devastating cutoff of fossil fuel and electricity.
In the most recent national elections in Colombia (June 21) and Honduras (last Nov. 30), Trump was seen as threatening economic harm (implicitly in Colombia and more explicitly in Honduras), if these citizens did not vote for his chosen candidate.
This is the recent and regional context of the fight for Brazil’s future. The Trump-Rubio interventions, with the collaboration of the Bolsonaro clan, have made the Flávio campaign into another US regime change operation. This should be defeated, for the sake of Brazil and the whole hemisphere.
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'I Was the Test Case': Mahmoud Khalil Decides to Stay and Fight
In his new memoir, Mahmoud Khalil describes the moment he realized his detention was bigger than him.
Sep 29, 2026
I had the first call with my lawyers four days after my arrest. The guards escorted me to a room across the detention center, a multipurpose hall with scattered chairs and a small table and a phone next to the reinforced window overlooking the inner yard. Several people were already on the call, attorneys whose names and faces I would see on the screen over the next hundred days. They asked me to confirm that I was alone. I did. “Do a visual sweep,” one of them suggested. I scanned the room and checked the corners, beneath the air-conditioning vents, along the ceiling lights, searching for something I couldn’t name. It felt performative. If they wanted to listen, they would listen.
The lawyers filled me in on the court proceedings so far. I had so many questions. They tumbled out of me, one after another, the accumulation of four days of confusion and dread. How could they do this? What are the charges? How is any of this legal? When will I be out? When will I be returned to New York?
They had no conclusive answers, only mostly legal terminology that obscured as much as it revealed. The lawyers were careful with their words, precise in ways that frustrated me. I wanted certainty. They could only offer procedure.
The king wanted to send a message, and I was the messenger, sent to everyone who might consider speaking out.
They explained that they had filed something called a habeas corpus petition on my behalf. It sounded ancient, almost biblical. Baher, one of the lawyers, was generous enough to explain that the Latin phrase dated back to the Magna Carta, to the thirteenth century, when kings could make people disappear and the barons had to invent a mechanism to find them. Habeas corpus was a demand: Produce the body. Show us the prisoner. Justify his detention, or let him go.
I was the body in question, shipped over thirteen hundred miles from New York to Jena, Louisiana.
The habeas corpus petition had been filed in federal court in New York, along with two requests or motions, one for release on bail while the case continued and another to compel my return to New York. Federal court was different from immigration court, I learned. The separate immigration process would start in two weeks, which was indicated in the papers they had handed me in New York. I didn’t understand. It’s all the same country, the same system. What difference does it make which court hears my case, and where?
A huge difference, it turned out—one that would decide the fate of my case in the days to come. “Immigration court is not a real court,” one of the lawyers said. Immigration courts are the president’s courts, where arguments challenging presidential illegality are swallowed by the urgency of an executive campaign of mass deportation. Immigration judges are government employees, appointed by the attorney general, who is appointed by the president—the same president who had tweeted about me. In immigration court, there is no presumption of innocence, no jury or real independence. The process is designed for efficiency, not justice. Federal courts were different. The federal court is a constitutional court, which can hear constitutional claims against the executive branch. The judges are appointed for life. They don’t answer to the administration. They must follow the Constitution and case law. The government wanted my case in immigration court because the outcome was easier to control. In federal court, they would actually have to justify what they had done. In federal court, I might win.
The government had concealed my whereabouts in those first crucial hours, the lawyers said. They hadn’t known where I was. New York? Elsewhere? They had even tried tracking flights to Guantánamo. They had filed an emergency petition at 4:38 in the morning to prevent my deportation, but I had already been moved to New Jersey at that point. By the time everyone figured out I was in Louisiana, the government was arguing that any legal challenge should be heard there, not in New York.
Louisiana’s courts, heavily Republican, would be more favorable to the Trump administration. By moving me here, the government had shifted the fight to terrain they controlled, using geography as a weapon.
But there was another reason. They wanted to isolate me. In New York, I had my wife, friends, community, and the press. In Louisiana, I had nothing. I was alone in a facility in the middle of the woods, cut off from everyone who knew me.
The battle, then, was over two things: Which court system would hear my case, immigration or federal? And which venue, New York or Louisiana? Our argument was simple: I resided and was arrested in New York. This wasn’t really an immigration case. I wasn’t detained for violating immigration law. I was detained for what I said. For protesting and speaking out about Palestine. That made it a constitutional case, one where the First Amendment was crucial, and constitutional questions belong in federal court.
The government’s argument was equally simple: You’re an immigrant, now detained in Louisiana. This is an immigration matter. Stay in your lane.
It all sounded technical. Procedural. The kind of thing that puts people to sleep. But the venue and jurisdiction would determine everything. The government knew it. That’s why they had moved so fast to get me out of New York. That’s why they hid where they were taking me.
My case was the blueprint they wanted to set, and the one we had to tear up.
As the lawyers talked, I began to understand the scope of what I was facing. This was not a mistake. It was not overzealous enforcement. This was deliberate and planned at the highest levels of government. The president had tweeted my picture. The secretary of state had invoked obscure powers. Multiple agencies had worked together to snatch me from my home and transport me across the country in less than a day.
By the end of the call, one thing was clear: The lawyers were as shocked as I was. These were experienced attorneys: Some had worked on landmark Guantánamo cases. They had seen government abuse and overreach. But this was different: the speed, the secrecy, the coordination. The invocation of powers they had never seen used before. They compared it to the Red Scare.
“This provision the secretary of state used,” or the Rubio Determination, as it was called, “we’re not aware of it ever being applied in a case like this,” one of the lawyers said. “It’s unprecedented.” So I was not just a case; I was an experiment, I realized. The government was testing what it could get away with, using me as the test subject or “blueprint,” as the White House would boast. If they succeeded with me, a permanent resident with no criminal history, imagine what they could do to others. To the men sleeping in bunks around me, who had no lawyers, no press, no one watching. We would later learn, from the government’s own court filings, that this law had never before been used against anyone with my status.
My case was the blueprint they wanted to set, and the one we had to tear up.
This was the turning point, the moment when I grasped that this was bigger than me. It was bigger than my case, my green card, my deportation. I had not been detained for a crime I committed. They knew I never committed a crime. I was detained for what I represent, for saying something the king and his courtiers didn’t like.
The king wanted to send a message, and I was the messenger, sent to everyone who might consider speaking out. Every student who might join a protest would get the message, every person who might dare to criticize Israel or question American policy, domestic or foreign. The message was simple: This could be you. Your rights will not protect you. Your innocence will not protect you. We can take you in the night, and there is nothing you can do about it.
If I chose not to fight the case, I could “self-deport,” the lawyers explained, and leave “voluntarily.” But the Rubio Determination came with a lifetime ban against returning to the United States. We ended the call. I made no response to this offer. Maybe I should have.
Lying on my bunk that night, my eyes wrapped in a makeshift blindfold of socks, I knew I couldn’t walk away. If I left, they would call it a victory. They would say I must have been guilty of something. My departure would confirm their accusations without them having to prove anything. Every lie they told about me would be validated by my departure. The smear campaign would become the official record. And it wouldn’t end with me.
If I self-deported, I would be handing them the road map for silencing dissent. Immigrants joining a protest would remember that green cards offer no protection, that years of building a life in this country can be erased if the government doesn’t like their speech. Everyone would understand the new rules: Speak up, and we will find a way to make you disappear.
The Palestine solidarity movement in America was already under siege when I was abducted. Students had been doxxed, smeared, suspended, expelled. Others had lost their jobs for signing letters or joining a protest. During his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to donors who were furious at the student uprising that he would crush the pro-Palestine protests and “set that movement back twenty-five or thirty years.” My case was meant to be the capstone, proof that they could go further than suspensions and firings.
I thought about the students I had met at Columbia, the ones who had risked their careers to pitch tents on the lawn, to demand that the university divest from companies profiting from occupation. If I ran, what message would that send to them? That the fight wasn’t worth it? That when the pressure got real, even the people who told them to speak up would flee?
I thought about the Palestinians who had been waging this struggle for decades, long before it was fashionable, before celebrities posted about it on Instagram or walked red carpets with pins on their lapels. They had faced worse than arbitrary detention. They had faced ethnic cleansing, daily humiliation, dehumanization, imprisonment, the loss of everything. Who was I to give up at the first serious test? I thought of the people in Gaza buried beneath rubble while the world debated the justifications for their deaths. About farmers in the West Bank facing Israeli settlers burning their villages with impunity. About the millions of refugees, scattered across the world, still holding keys to the homes to which they could not return. They couldn’t self-deport out of their suffering. They couldn’t sign a paper to make it stop.
I was the test case. And I refused to comply.
Excerpted from NO LAND TO STAND ON: Notes from Detention by Mahmoud Khalil. Published by Metropolitan Books. Copyright © 2026 by Mahmoud Khalil. All rights reserved.
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Van Hollen Says ICC Members Would Sanction Trump and Rubio If They 'Have Any Self-Respect’
In what the Democratic senator called an effort at “obstructing investigations of Netanyahu’s war crimes,” the Trump administration is planning a dramatic escalation of its sanctions against the court.
Sep 22, 2026
As the United Nations General Assembly prepared to meet, a US senator said President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should face sanctions for their role in trying to destroy the International Criminal Court in order to protect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"If European countries and other signatories to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have any self-respect, they'd sanction Rubio and Trump for obstructing investigations of Netanyahu's war crimes," wrote Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) Monday on social media.
He was responding to a report from the Wall Street Journal detailing "a sharp escalation" in the Trump administration's efforts to, in Rubio's words, "dismantle" the ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024. The body accused the prime minister and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war.
The ICC has also reportedly launched investigations into two other far-right ministers in Netanyahu's cabinet, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for their roles in aggressively expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.
The Trump administration had already aggressively sanctioned ICC officials involved in efforts to prosecute Americans or Israelis, including then-chief prosecutor Karim Khan and several judges and prosecutors. It had also sanctioned UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese and several Palestinian human rights organizations that had brought evidence of alleged Israeli crimes before the tribunal.
Now, The Journal reports that:
The Trump administration is preparing to impose sweeping sanctions on the [ICC]...
The sanctions would forbid most transactions with the ICC after a grace period of six to seven months... That could potentially cripple the court by prohibiting it from conducting transactions in US dollars, cutting it off from much of the global financial system.
It is unclear when a final decision and announcement might come, though some US officials said the move could be finalized as soon as this week during the United Nations General Assembly meeting or in the following days.
Several world leaders have been vocally critical of the US attack on the ICC, though they've stopped short of calling for sanctions against US officials.
Responding to Rubio's sanctions in August, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa said that the ICC's "judges and officials must be able to act independently and without external pressure."
Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen, whose nation is home to the ICC, said the Netherlands disapproves of efforts to sanction the court, adding that Dutch officials were actively working with the EU to protect the court from institution-wide US sanctions. Possible protective measures reportedly include alternative banking and payment arrangements outside the US dollar system.
There have also been calls within the European Parliament, including from Spanish socialist politician Iratxe García Pérez and others, to activate the EU's so-called "blocking statute," which would prohibit European companies from complying with the US sanctions.
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Marco Rubio Wants to Defeat Socialism in Nicaragua, Not Restore Democracy
Selective concern for "democracy" suggest that the real target is not simply its political system but the survival of a socialist government that continues to defy US regional dominance.
Sep 21, 2026
After Venezuela and Cuba, will the Trump administration turn its spotlight onto Nicaragua? Secretary of State Rubio has just finished a tour of three Latin American countries now allied with Trump—Colombia, Ecuador and Peru—and was asked about US policy towards Cuba and Nicaragua, and what he would do “to finally bring those dictatorships to an end.” Accusing left-wing governments of “destroying” their countries and bringing “misery” to their citizens, and in some cases of posing a security threat to the United States, Rubio said that the problem can now be addressed “in partnership with other presidents and other leaders in this region that feel the same way.”
Back in July, after media claims that Nicaragua’s Sandinista government plans to abolish elections completely, Rubio said that Nicaragua was “thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere.” In September he added that its government had “indefinitely deprive[d] Nicaraguans of free and fair elections.” Yet Rubio, of course, said nothing in Ecuador about its president Noboa imposing a complete ban on the main, leftist opposition party, which ran him close in last year’s elections.
Washington’s selective concern for “democracy,” together with the measures now being considered against Nicaragua, suggest that the real target is not simply its political system but the survival of a socialist government that continues to defy US regional dominance.
Rubio has been pushing members of the Organization of American States to take action and stop “business as usual” with Nicaragua’s government. A meeting of OAS foreign ministers to discuss new sanctions was planned for September 15. It has been postponed, but of all OAS members, only Mexico and Brazil failed to support it.
The new OAS secretary, Albert Ramdin, enthusiastically urges its members to back US threats. Asked whether the OAS will break the rules in its own charter of “non-intervention” in the domestic affairs of countries, he was forced to equivocate. He claimed (as the OAS has on many previous occasions) that its plans aren’t interventionist, saying nevertheless that it must “actively respond” to what he calls “a political disaster.”
In a Washington meeting organized by the Nicaraguan government’s opponents, Ramdin called for a “critical mass” of countries to exert pressure because Nicaragua’s actions, he claims, have “repercussions that extend beyond the country's borders.” He openly admits to “speaking with opposition leaders who are living in Washington DC” as if that were normal behavior for a supposedly independent diplomat.
Naturally, these moves have excited the various Nicaraguan opposition groups, based in the US and Costa Rica. The little-known, Miami-based “Nicaraguan Exiles Unit” demanded US military intervention. The most violent opposition group, the Costa Rica-based Campesino Movement, which in 2018 launched fatal attacks on several Nicaraguan police stations, joined the call for armed intervention. This prompted a formal protest from Nicaragua to the Costa Rican government for permitting groups to act in this way, even using children in a video to incite such violence.
The feasibility of successful military action was examined this month by academic experts writing in War on the Rocks. They conclude that the conditions that allowed the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president do not exist in Nicaragua and it is far from clear that military force would leave the country with a viable administration in place.
By the time he reached Colombia, a note of realism had crept into Rubio’s comments. Asked again what he would do to “end authoritarian governments,” he replied that the "first responsibility to change a system belongs to the people of those countries.” Similarly, OAS Secretary Ramdin, in an interview full of contradictions, also balks at intervening in Nicaragua’s “domestic affairs.”
If both Rubio and Ramdin reject military intervention, what might be on the agenda either in the State Department or when regional foreign ministers eventually convene? Inevitably, there will be lengthy condemnations of Nicaragua linked to calls for “free, credible and accessible elections.” By implication, these would only be “free” if the opposition parties funded by Washington, which (with US assistance) carried out the coup attempt in 2018 in which over 200 Nicaraguans died, were able to stand.
Based on Washington's previous interventions in Nicaraguan elections, it would release a fresh wave of financial support, media manipulation, social media domination and bribes and threats from Trump, aimed at getting Nicaraguans to vote for Washington’s favored candidate, just as occurred in Honduras in its recent election. It is precisely to avoid this interference that Nicaragua is changing its electoral rules to exclude candidates who receive US money or who directed the 2018 insurrection.
Opposition journalist Wilfredo Miranda believes that countries are divided in their response and that “concrete” steps will emerge from the proposed meeting of foreign ministers only if Rubio himself attends. Even so, the range of measures under discussion look like more of the same, given that Nicaragua is already subject to sanctions on more than 60 individual ministers and other functionaries and two dozen state institutions and businesses, while more than 2,000 individuals are denied US visas. Nicaragua has also been deprived of funding by multilateral bodies such as the IMF and World Bank and is subject to higher tariffs on its exports than apply to its neighbors.
Ramdin is proposing coordinated action by all OAS member countries, not just the US, to “punish” Nicaragua. This might involve diplomatic isolation, targeted sanctions, new visa restrictions, limits on international flights and possibly broader trade restrictions of uncertain severity.
However, reaching consensus on tougher measures will be problematic. Nicaragua’s immediate neighbors—El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica—have close economic ties with it. They depend heavily on transport routes and the inter-regional electricity grid through the country. They were all damaged economically by the 2018 coup attempt, when its protagonists blocked the Panamerican highway and held over 400 international truckers hostage.
Nicaragua’s neighbors must be aware that Rubio’s rhetoric about its citizens living in “misery” has no basis in reality. The country has had the region’s fastest growth in GDP over the past decade, has the largest hospital network and the best roads. Indeed, a prosperous Nicaragua is key to regional stability: it receives 28% of its imports from Central America and contributes 16% of its exports. Nicaragua’s economy “weathers multiple shocks” according to the IMF, including US attacks.
Nicaragua is also a recognized “containment wall” against regional organized crime and drug trafficking. The country is far safer than neighboring Honduras and Costa Rica, which have both seen explosions in violent crime.
Ramdin drew attention to the potential regional impact of a major disaster or deteriorating economic conditions in Nicaragua, but its neighbors know that the Sandinista government has invested heavily in disaster prevention and its economy is buoyant.
While Ramdin focuses on “restoring democracy,” Rubio focuses more on Nicaragua’s socialist government which, in reality, has raised its people from “misery” and successfully challenged the imperialist model. His problem is that while Nicaragua’s opposition leaders are committed to the return of neoliberalism, which Nicaraguans experienced and rejected two decades ago, they only offer vague plans for political transition. In reality, they admit that they are “not yet unified or [have] built the institutional base needed to present a credible alternative.”
The groups also have little currency among Trump’s Florida base, fixated on regime change in Venezuela and Cuba. As Juan Gonzalez, a former Latin America aide to President Biden, told Politico: “The lesson from Nicaragua is: Don’t matter too much, don’t embarrass Washington and don’t become a domestic political issue.”
So the likelihood, if indeed Latin American foreign ministers can agree on anything, and if Rubio fits their meeting into his schedule, is more rhetoric about “democracy” along with additional sanctions. They’ll be deciding whether they should threaten Nicaraguans with the “misery” that Rubio claims they are already suffering.
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‘Serial Killer Empire’: US Kills 3 in Boat Strike, Bringing Trump Murder Count in ‘Make-Believe War’ to 230
"This is neither 'peace' nor 'strength,'" said one policy expert. "It's gruesome."
Sep 10, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about a shift in the Pentagon's boat bombing operations, in which the US in recent days has begun interdicting suspected refueling vessels for drug boats in Ecuador's territorial waters—but he made clear that the military is also still killing people aboard boats, as it did Wednesday in the latest bombing in the Caribbean.
US Southern Command announced that Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—the recently rebranded name of the Trump administration's expanding military operation that it says is aimed at stopping drug trafficking—had executed its latest "lethal kinetic strike" on a boat operating along known "narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean," killing three people that the US claimed were "narco-terrorists."
"Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking," said US Southern Command, releasing no evidence of the boat's illegal activities.
International legal experts have emphasized that the US is not in an authorized military conflict with drug cartels and that drug trafficking under international law is treated as a crime by law enforcement agencies—not as an act of force that the US can legally respond to with military action.
Officials and military service members involved in the strikes may be liable for war crimes or murder, experts have warned. Some of the at least 230 victims of the boat bombings since last September have been identified, with family members saying they were not even involved in drug trafficking.
Historian Alexander Aviña used the term "serial killer empire" to describe the Trump administration after the latest bombing.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America noted that the announcement by US Southern Command Wednesday night was the first in more than a year of attacks in which the strike order was "not attributed to a person."
Isacson also pointed out that according to Customs and Border Patrol data, there is little, if any, evidence that bombing boats and killing crew members and passengers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean has done anything to stop the flow of drugs into the US.
Outside the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, Rubio told reporters Wednesday that as the US also begins conducting joint operations with Ecuador to interdict suspected refueling vessels in the country's territorial waters, "we have to operate according to their laws."
In those operations, people aboard the boats have been removed and handed over to Ecuadorian authorities before the US has conducted strikes.
Rubio at one point referred to the lethal boat bombings as operations that took place "earlier, last year," but also emphasized, "We still blow up ships if need be."
Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group said the administration is continuing its campaign of "illegal killing in a make-believe war."
The latest boat bombing also came as Rubio announced that the US was designating Los Tiguerones, an Ecuadorian gang, as a foreign terrorist organization, empowering the administration to freeze the group's assets in US financial institutions.
The designation does not give the US the legal authority to carry out military strikes against Los Tiguerones or other gangs the administration has designated as terrorist groups—but a key element of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere's expansion in Latin America has been joint military operations, including a US-Ecuadorian joint attack on a dairy farm where officials had claimed drug traffickers were operating.
The new designation "is part of [the administration's] narrative about a new 'War on Terror' against the narcos," said Finucane.
Glaeldys González Calanche, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told The New York Times that Los Tiguerones has had diminishing power and influence in Ecuador in recent years and expressed surprise at the designation.
Ecuadorian gangs "operate at the lowest links of the chain" of drug trafficking operations in Latin America, González told the Times. “They provide services, like moving cargo from point A to point B. Ecuadorian groups are not decisive, they aren’t major players.”
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