Stephen Miller shifted the Trump administration’s attack on Mexican drug cartels to its “unorthodox lethal campaign” on Venezuela, according to a new report.
The White House Deputy Chief of Staff and architect of Trump’s aggressive immigration policy reportedly took a leading role through the Homeland Security Committee in September, according to a new Washington Post report Thursday.
The strategy change stemmed from Miller’s original plan to target drug cartels — and apparently “Miller, and other senior officials were looking for a fight.”
“Reducing the power of cartels, an idea that dated back to the first Trump administration, would ease the flow of migrants and narcotics, creating early political wins,” The Post reported. “But as the administration surged thousands of U.S. troops to the southern border, increased U.S. surveillance flights and boosted intelligence sharing with its neighbor, Mexican military operations across the border curbed cartel action, the people said. That left Miller and his team looking for another target.”
The unprecedented attacks in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean have a larger motivation behind them and are “unprecedented in its use of lethal force by the U.S. military against alleged drug smuggling groups.”
“When you hope and wait for something to develop that doesn’t, you start looking at countries south of Mexico,” an official, who did not disclose their name due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing matter, told The Post.
Miller has been pushing for increased “results and fresh military options that could be turned into future operations,” insiders told the outlet.
Now, the aim appears to oust Venezuela’s leader.
“These operations, which began Sept. 2, have evolved to embrace the Trump team’s long-running ambition to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the president has accused of overseeing ‘narco-terrorists’ assaulting the United States,” The Post reported.
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