President Abelardo de la Espriella is signaling that his campaign against Colombia’s cartels will be relentless. Nicknamed “El Tigre,” the country’s new leader was elected on a law-and-order platform. His early crackdown on organized crime appears to be producing political dividends at home—and winning support in Washington.
In the early morning hours, de la Espriella arrived at the Barranquilla police command as 587 police officers and soldiers raided 50 sites across the Caribbean port city and nearby suburbs in Operation Blindaje 360. Days earlier, Colombian media had publicized an audio recording intercepted by police in which “Keko,” the alleged leader of a gang known as “Los del Freseo,” boasted that the president could not touch him.
“The Tiger’s got nothing. Let him come out, and we’ll put lead in him,” Keko allegedly said in the recording.
Before dawn, however, Colombia’s president had located him—and confronted him face-to-face in a moment captured on video.
In footage released by the presidential office, El Tigre told Keko that the gang leader was “a tough guy on the phone… but the look of the fear on his face matched that of his many victims.” The operation resulted in 72 arrests.
President Abelardo de la Espriella speaks at the Jose Maria Cordova Military School in Bogota on Aug. 26, 2026, after Colombia’s government announced plans to classify guerrilla fighters, drug traffickers and other criminal groups as “terrorists.” (Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images)
The dramatic encounter resonated with Colombians who had long argued that former leftist President Gustavo Petro’s policy of engaging drug traffickers had made the country more vulnerable to organized crime. Colombian and Venezuelan cartels were reportedly moving into territory left exposed by a power vacuum and weak law enforcement.
De la Espriella’s government is also working to dismantle Petro’s “total peace” policy, which sought negotiations with multiple armed organizations. Before taking office, the president-elect said he would eliminate key parts of the initiative and reinstate arrest warrants for members of illegal armed groups.
Nearly three months into his term, the 48-year-old lawyer has ended his predecessor’s “total peace” talks, directed authorities to treat every armed group as a terrorist organization and reported more than 32,000 arrests. He is pursuing that campaign in close coordination with Washington.
Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella appears after a raid in Barranquilla to confront Keko face-to-face on Oct. 16, 2026. (Abelardo De La Espriella @Abelaespriella)
A dual U.S.-Colombian citizen who lived in Miami before entering politics, de la Espriella has aligned Colombia with President Donald Trump’s anti-cartel coalition. Last month, he personally turned over a guerrilla commander accused of supplying Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel to DEA agents. The suspect was shackled at the hands and feet.
The prisoner, Geovany Andrés Rojas, known as “Araña,” allegedly led the FARC dissident faction Comandos de la Frontera. He now faces narco-terrorism charges in Southern California.
“The option of dialogue is completely exhausted,” de la Espriella told troops after his Aug. 7 inauguration. In an Oct. 12 address, he said authorities had made 32,503 arrests, taken 33 ringleaders out of action and destroyed or disabled 679 drug-production sites. He has also signed more than 100 extradition orders, including five involving former armed-group peace negotiators wanted in the United States whose transfers had been frozen by the previous government.
An Army operation in La Gabarra, Tibú, led to the detention of five FARC dissidents and the seizure of weapons and communications equipment on Oct. 6, 2026. (Abelardo De La Espriella @Abelaespriella)
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The offensive has extended deep into rural areas. Conflict monitor ACLED identified August as the deadliest month for clashes between security forces and armed groups since it began tracking Colombia in 2018.
In late August, de la Espriella warned FARC dissident leader Iván Mordisco: “When you least expect it, a bomb is going to fall on you.” Two days later, he walked past the bagged bodies of 23 suspected dissidents at an army base in Guaviare. Troops also killed the top commander of a paramilitary-rooted trafficking organization in La Guajira.
Colombia joined Trump’s Shield of the Americas coalition as its 19th member in August. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Bogotá had authorized “joint military operations to destroy terrorists and terror networks domestically.” The administration has proposed $1 billion in security assistance, subject to congressional approval, while Marine Gen. Francis Donovan, the head of U.S. Southern Command, has visited Colombian military bases.
However, Colombian Vice President José Manuel Restrepo told News Outlet that although his country supports Trump’s push for a new Western Hemisphere security alliance, American forces would not conduct operations inside Colombia. Colombian troops, he said, will lead the fight against the country’s armed groups.
President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth attend the “Shield of the Americas” Summit at Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida, on March 7, 2026. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Benjamin Gedan, a senior fellow and director of the Latin America Program at the Stimson Center in Washington and a former White House South America director, said the past several years represented an unusual break from the longstanding U.S.-Colombia security partnership:
“For decades, the United States and Colombia closely cooperated to fight guerrillas and organized crime. Plan Colombia was celebrated by both Republicans and Democrats. The Colombian military is well-trained and battle-tested. Renewed close cooperation between Bogotá and Washington is a cornerstone of the renewed U.S. focus on security in Latin America,” he said.
But Gedan cautioned that highly publicized military strikes alone will not solve the problem. “These groups are well-armed, well-funded and thrive in regions with little state presence,” he said. Images of suspected criminals in body bags may suggest progress after the previous administration’s failed strategy, just as videos of exploding speedboats have become a signature image of the Shield of the Americas. In both cases, he argued, a more sophisticated plan is needed to deliver lasting setbacks to criminal organizations.
Americans are advised against traveling within five miles of the Colombia-Venezuela border because of crime, kidnapping and armed conflict. (Schneyder Mendoza/AFP via Getty Images)
Oscar Palma, a security studies professor at the University of Rosario in Bogotá, said it remains too early to determine whether the policy shift will produce lasting results in Colombia. “Beyond the policing acts themselves, there is the subjective feeling of security, with debates within Colombian society over whether this open-war strategy will make people more or less safe. Many argue that gangs are now responding more aggressively to defend their territory and business interests, while others believe a stronger police presence will eventually reduce organized crime.”
Palma also rejected the idea that Colombia must choose between all-out war and dialogue to achieve peace with groups such as the FARC and other gang leaders. “It is a fiction that you will come to zero combatants simply by pursuing one strategy or the other,” he said. “All-out war will never eliminate everyone fighting for the FARC or organized crime, just as peace talks—particularly when carried out through a misguided policy such as the one led by [Gustavo] Petro—will not necessarily deliver real results.”
He pointed to former President Juan Manuel Santos’ approach to the FARC as a stronger model. “There were talks, but they formed part of a broader strategy that also involved fighting these groups with arms and bringing them to justice,” Palma said. That approach, he added, helped make Colombia considerably safer.
“There is a wave of freedom, a wave of democracy, a wave of free market… There is a new momentum for the region and we have to take advantage of that momentum. That’s what I said to President Trump,” Restrepo told News Outlet. “If we want to keep and preserve democracy in the region, the Shield of the Americas is going to be the best opportunity to do it.”
