Is Eliminating Root Causes Part of the Trump Causes?

During the Biden administration, Americans heard a lot about the need to fix the “root causes” of the problems at our border. Yet, we saw no fix take place – until the Trump administration.

Under the direction of President Donald Trump, the U.S. Navy has blasted at least five vessels out of the water off the Venezuelan coast, and a sixth strike took place in the Caribbean Sea against a vessel suspected of carrying drugs. The last strike had surviving crew members, which were taken aboard the naval carrier. 

Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal wrote of cracking down on “root causes” from another nation. Trump is “cracking down on the crime and criminal organizations that send waves of people and illicit drugs into our country.” He announced on Sunday that “he would be cutting off all aid to the nation of Colombia” and said that President Gustavo Petro was an “illegal drug leader.” Stepman continued: 

The State Department revoked Petro’s visa in September when he joined a protest in New York City and allegedly called for U.S. troops to disobey orders.

Trump continued to rhetorically hammer the Colombian government just as the U.S. military continues to hammer drug traffickers off their coastline.

“They make drugs, they refine drugs, they make cocaine, they have cocaine factories,” Trump said on Sunday. “They have no fight against drugs, and I’m stopping all payments to Colombia because they don’t have anything to do with their fight against drugs.”

It isn’t just Colombia that Trump has tussled with. He’s used military strikes to annihilate drug traffickers off the Venezuelan coastline while putting pressure on the regime of leftist Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Maduro’s government almost certainly helped the vicious Tren de Aragua gang infiltrate the United States.

The president’s moves in Central and South America and the Caribbean mark a central and somewhat overlooked cornerstone of his national security policy. As I and others have noted, Trump appears to be reviving a sort of new Monroe Doctrine, where the U.S. is more focused on dealing with issues in the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s early moves regarding Greenland, the Panama Canal, and trade with Mexico and Canada suggested as much.

The fact that Trump has devoted much time and attention on securing peace deals in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere doesn’t preclude this. In fact, I’d say it’s a part of this administration’s shifting focus. Peace far abroad, containment of China in Asia, and stability at our national doorstep. These all seem to be very much a part of the “Trump doctrine.”

What’s interesting to me is that Trump is actually addressing the “root causes” that created the border and immigration crisis that the Biden administration allowed to burn out of control….

Clearly, enforcing border laws and deporting those who broke them is having a huge impact on the border crisis, which has seemingly disappeared. But the president is willing to go a step further to ensure that the long-term problem is further mitigated by focusing on stopping crime, halting the flow of drugs, and putting the screws on hostile leftist governments.

It seems to be working.