In November, Ecuadorians voted against allowing U.S. military bases in their country. Just over three months later, U.S. armed forces launched operations there, collaborating with the Ecuadorian military in a campaign designed to crack down on narcotics transit and associated crime within the country.
The joint effort has included regional curfews, arrests of gang members, and targeted bombing. It has also been criticized as military overreach, with a group of U.S. lawmakers backed by human rights groups raising concerns over the conduct of the U.S. military in Ecuador during the last several months. The U.S. military presence is also controversial for Ecuadorians, said Ernesto Anzieta, the Metropolitan Director for Citizen Security in Quito.
“The problem is that you are putting [the] military in contact with populations which in some cases are innocent people, in other cases are people that are non-combatants… but are related to criminal gangs, and in other cases they are enemies,” he said in an interview.
Ecuador is not a major producer of cocaine, but 70% of the world’s supply is smuggled through the country and exported to Europe and North America from its coast. Formerly one of Latin America’s most peaceful countries, narcotics and associated gang activity have made Ecuador one of its most violent.
“Ecuador for a long time was an island of peace,” said Anzieta. The country, he said, is not institutionally prepared for what is going on.
Organized crime is multifaceted, encompassing a broad network of corruption in the justice system and the incarceration system, with gangs adapting to traffic whatever goods are most profitable. Right now, narcotics gangs are also involved in Ecuador’s illegal gold mining industry. Cartel violence must be viewed as the systemic issue it is, Anzieta said.
Eddie Contreras, who served as a member of the Ecuadorian military for more than 25 years, supports the U.S. joint military operation. At the same time, he said, corruption must also be addressed within the incarceration system, the justice system, the political structure, and the military itself.
Military operations are sending gang members to prisons, Contreras said, but violence levels remain high, and criminals still operate and recruit from the jails. “The prisons are universities of perfection for crime,” he said in Spanish.
Lorena Villavicencio, a security and defense specialist who worked in Ecuador’s National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, proposed bolstering protection and compensation for prison workers, conducting a serious investigation into criminal connections in the transportation and private security sectors, and addressing the lack of social services in poor communities.
Drug trafficking gangs have developed territorial control largely in western provinces, which often withstands strong-arm military operations, according to Villavicencio. “When we have these big operations, it helps, but after a couple of weeks or months, statistics show that we get back to the same levels of violence.”
In some cases, after the military operation is finished, she said, gangs will move back into the area and question local people about what they told the military. Gangs function through extortion and threats, and military pressure can exacerbate this.
Gangs also control territory in large part because of the services they provide to their population. In the city of Duran, for instance, “you have these criminal groups who are basically in charge of providing the water… for the population,” said Villavicencio. “If you have a part of society who doesn’t have the state to provide basic needs … electricity, education, health…the organized crime will use that.”
The German social development organizations Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung have been doing good work in Ecuador, Villavicencio said, also pointing to the initiatives of the European Union in collaborations such as “El PAcCTO” and campaigns to raise awareness about child and teenage gang recruitment. These social development programs must be part of efforts to combat organized crime in the country, she believes.
During his presidency, Donald Trump has prioritized exerting influence in the Western Hemisphere, bombing more than 59 boats the U.S. says were carrying narcotics in the Caribbean and Pacific. The U.S. also captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and imposed extensive sanctions on Cuba, while President Trump has founded the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of some Latin American countries whose objectives include stopping “criminal and narco-terrorist gangs and cartels” throughout the Americas.
An American military presence in Ecuador may be helpful in the short term, but in the long term, Ecuador will need to ensure its own efficacy as a state, said Villavicencio. “[I]f the state [is] not able to manage their own challenges… if you don’t have strong institutions internally… any type of … cooperation would not be effective enough to be sustainable in the long run.”
Cocaine and Corruption: As U.S. Military Operations Continue, Ecuadorians Say Drug Crime Needs Holistic Response was first published on the Latino News Network and was republished with permission.
Sophia Lumsdaine is a student of history, political science, journalism, and Spanish at George Fox University. She recently spent four months abroad in Quito, Ecuador.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain.