American intelligence operatives have been given authority to conduct lethal “covert” operations against foreign narco-terrorists, according to a new report. Several Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials told The New York Times that President Donald Trump had authorized “covert” CIA action in Venezuela, targeting the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro.

The Trump administration has long alleged that Maduro and his administration are closely linked to the Venezuela-based narco-terrorist gang and foreign terrorist organization (FTO) Tren de Aragua (TdA), which has been responsible for aggressive violence and drug-dealing in the U.S. The secret authorization, usually called a “presidential finding” and often hidden even from most congressional oversight, was confirmed to the NYT by multiple government officials. The president acknowledged the authorization during a press conference on Wednesday, while also discussing the possibility of U.S. military land strikes against Venezuela.

“We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now we’ll stop it by land,” the president said, referring to strikes on U.S.-bound drug boats. When asked if he would launch land-based military attacks against Venezuela-based drug organizations, the president replied, “I don’t want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control.” He was also asked if CIA agents had approval to assassinate Maduro, which the president called a “ridiculous question.”

The NYT did not detail what CIA operations had been authorized by the president, noting that presidential findings “are closely guarded secrets” and “their precise language is rarely made public.” However, the newspaper did claim that “lethal” operations in Venezuela have been approved. The news comes as the Trump administration has been targeting narco-terrorist watercraft affiliated with TdA, blowing drug boats out of the water and killing dozens of hostile TdA terrorists.

Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department, headed by Secretary Marco Rubio, formally declared six Mexican drug cartels and two Latin American international gangs as FTOs. TdA was one of the two gangs. The militant drug dealers began as a prison gang in Venezuela in 2009 or 2010 and has since burgeoned into an international criminal powerhouse in the Western hemisphere, relying on extortion, racketeering, arms smuggling, kidnapping, human trafficking, and murder to support, facilitate, and further its grip on the drug trade in Latin America and the U.S. During the presidency of Joe Biden, the gang developed a particularly strong foothold in major metropolitan areas in the U.S. like Chicago, Denver, and New York City.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump and his deputies have taken an increasingly aggressive stance against TdA and the FTO’s Venezuelan allies. An FBI report in April confirmed that Maduro and his administration are working with TdA in an apparent effort to destabilize the U.S. and Latin American countries and commandeer the Western hemisphere drug trade. Maduro uses TdA terrorists as “proxies,” the FBI reported, and is “aiding and abetting” the narco-terrorist gang and making Venezuela a TdA “sanctuary.”

Maduro’s link to TdA is largely through a powerful but shadowy Venezuelan group known as Cartel de los Soles or Cartel of the Suns. Historically, the cartel has not been characterized as a traditional hierarchical criminal organization, but has operated as a series of closely-linked cells, led by officers of Venezuela’s armed forces. The cartel originated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when members of the Bolivarian National Guard (Guardia Nacional Bolivariana or GNB) began extorting bribes from drug dealers to traffic in Venezuela. Two GNB generals — Ramón Guillén Dávila and Orlando Hernández Villegas, both directors of anti-narcotics units — were investigated for corruption and drug trafficking in 1993: the golden sun emblems on their uniforms gave rise to the nickname the Cartel of the Suns.

After a 2002 coup briefly forced then-president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez from power, Chávez began relying on corrupt military commanders loyal only to him, elevating them to positions of political power upon his return to office and creating a sort of praetorian government rife with corruption and ties to the drug trade, which blossomed in Venezuela as Colombian rebels and drug dealers were increasingly forced out of their native country to seek shelter elsewhere.

Under Chávez, the drug trade became a prime source of income for military officials, who often worked with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or FARC), a militant left-wing guerilla warfare organization funded predominantly by the production and sale of cocaine. Since then, numerous Venezuelan military officials have been investigated and even arrested in connection with the drug trade. Reporters covering the connection have been murdered, drug shipments from rival or dissident cartels or gangs have been seized by the armed forces, and shipments of tons of cocaine and fentanyl have been connected to Venezuela and its military.

According to an InSight Crime report, Maduro became the unofficial head of the Cartel of the Suns in 2017, following a severe economic and financial crisis in the country during which the regular pay for military and police officials was jeopardized, leaving the drug trade as officers’ chief means of income. Although seemingly distancing himself from the cartel’s activities, Maduro and his deputies became “power brokers” effectively running the cartel, ensuring that all members are paid, resolving disputes between different cartel cells, and further ensuring that Venezuela’s military and police are personally loyal to Maduro himself.

In 2020, several months before leaving office at the end of his first term, Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on charges of “narco-terrorism” due to their ties to the Cartel of the Suns and TdA. In July, the U.S. Treasury Department officially sanctioned the cartel, which was designated an FTO, and explicated that Maduro is, in fact, in charge of the group.

Earlier this month, the administration formally cut diplomatic ties with Venezuela, citing Maduro’s refusal to cooperate with U.S. anti-narco-terrorism objectives. House Democrats openly criticized the move, anticipating potential military action against Venezuela. “Trump and Rubio are pushing for regime change in Venezuela,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats wrote. “The American people don’t want another war — and Congress can’t let any president start one illegally or unilaterally. That’s not how the Constitution works.”

However, the president informed Congress late last month that the U.S. is officially engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with “nonstate armed groups,” namely TdA. “The cartels involved have grown more armed, well organized, and violent. They have the financial means, sophistication, and paramilitary capabilities needed to operate with impunity. They illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year,” the president wrote in a Congressional notice. “The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.”

Maduro has repeatedly refuted the Trump administration’s allegations of his involvement in narco-terrorism, pledging to bring a complaint against the U.S. before the United Nations. Trump’s ambassador to the U.N., former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, dismissed Maduro’s claims in an interview Thursday morning. “Venezuela can bring whatever they want to the U.N.,” he said. “… [A]lso part of the U.N. is Article 51 of the U.N. Charter that enables a country to defend itself, and that’s what President Trump’s doing,” Waltz added. “President Trump is going to do whatever it takes and use all the tools in the toolkit from the intelligence community, from the Department of War, and of course, diplomatically, to defend U.S. sovereignty against actions that are actively killing Americans.”