Trump hosts White House roundtable on homeland security task forces
Mexican leaders want US help against cartels
Mexican Senator Lilly Téllez joins “Fox & Friends Weekend” to discuss growing tensions between President Trump and Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as the United States increases its military presence in the region to target drug boats and cartels.
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FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump will host a roundtable discussion at the White House Thursday afternoon with law enforcement and administration officials to discuss the successes of the Homeland Security Task Forces, which the president created on his first day in office to quell threats from criminal cartels in the United States.
“The President’s Homeland Security Task Forces are a historic achievement that highlights what the federal government can achieve with a leader like President Trump ready to cut red tape, increase coordination, and prioritize the security of the American people,” White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital about the event.
“In a short period of time, the Trump administration has removed deadly drugs, illegal weapons, dangerous foreign terrorists and cartel members from American communities,” she added. “The American people are safer today because of HSTFs – and they’re just getting started.”
Trump established the Homeland Security Task Forces on January 20 – his first day back in office – through an executive order “Protecting the American People from Invasion.” The executive order directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to establish such task forces in every state as part of the administration’s efforts to thwart cartels and human trafficking rings operating on U.S. soil.
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President Donald Trump is expected to hold a roundtable with administration officials to discuss updates on the Homeland Security task forces. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The executive order specifically directed the task forces to “end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations across the United States, dismantle cross-border human trafficking and smuggling networks, end the scourge of human trafficking and smuggling, with particular emphasis on offenses involving children, and ensure the use of all law enforcement tools available to faithfully execute U.S. immigration laws.”
On Thursday, administration officials will join Trump to provide an update on the task forces’ efforts.
The roundtable will be joined by Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Noem, Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Fox News Digital has learned.
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A January executive order directed Attorney General Pam Bondi, here, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to establish such task forces in every state as part of the administration’s efforts to thwart cartels and human trafficking rings operating on U.S. soil. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital has learned that the nationwide task forces became fully operational in late August and resulted in thousands of arrests and the removal of dangerous drugs and illegal guns from America’s streets.
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More than 3,000 foreign terrorists and cartel members have been arrested in the task force operations, including members of notoriously dangerous gangs such as the Sinaloa Cartel, MS-13 and the Jalisco Nuevo Genaracion Cartel, Fox News Digital has learned.
President Donald Trump will host a roundtable discussion at the White House on October 23, 2025, with law enforcement and administration officials, such as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. (Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press)
The task forces also recovered two million fentanyl pills and seven tons of other deadly narcotics, seized $3 million in currency and removed more than 1,000 illegal guns from American communities.
Trump campaigned, in part, on eliminating violent illegal immigrants and crime from American communities, highlighting these efforts in his speech to Congress in March 2025.
“The territory immediately south of our border is now completely dominated by criminal cartels who murder, rape, torture and exercise total control. They have complete control over an entire nation, which poses a grave threat to our national security,” Trump said at the time. “The cartels are waging war on America, and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels.”
The roundtable comes as the U.S. military carries out strikes against ships suspected of involvement in drug cartels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The strikes began in September and are part of Trump’s broader efforts to dismantle transnational cartels by force.
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Trump hosted a similar roundtable discussion at the White House earlier in October, inviting independent journalists who have directly encountered Antifa violence to speak about their experiences as the administration targeted the left-wing group’s protests outside immigration centers and recently labeled it a “domestic terrorist organization.”
