Latin American Cartels Diversify Beyond
Latin American transnational criminal organizations have expanded into avocado extortion, migrant smuggling, and illegal resource extraction, according to
Latin America’s transnational criminal organizations are diversifying beyond drug trafficking into other illegal schemes. This expansion includes avocado production, human smuggling, and illegal logging, fishing, and gold mining.
TCOs have entrenched themselves in Mexico’s avocado industry, often called “green gold.” They control aspects of production, sales, and transportation at some farms. Farmers are charged protection fees ranging from $135 to $500 per hectare monthly, backed by threats of violence or death.
Lime farmers also face extortion. In October 2024, Mexico deployed 660 soldiers and National Guard officers to Michoacán to protect lime growers. In August 2024, over half of lime packing warehouses in Michoacán closed after cartels like Los Viagras demanded income cuts.
Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based TCO, focuses on human smuggling of migrant women and girls for sex trafficking and forced labor. Migrants who try to escape are often killed as a warning.
Gary J. Hale, a former U.S. federal law enforcement and intelligence official with 37 years of experience, estimates Mexican TCOs made nearly $100 billion from migrant smuggling over the past 20 years, or $5 billion annually. He notes the United Nations World Drug Report estimates Mexican TCOs make about $12 billion annually in drug profits.
Hale co-wrote a Rice University Baker Institute paper stating most migrant smuggling through Mexico is likely sponsored by organized crime syndicates using social media to organize caravans and charge smuggling fees. He predicts TCOs will adopt a “wait and see” approach due to U.S. crackdowns on illegal immigration.
TCOs have also moved into illegal natural resource extraction. A 2022 Brookings Institution report by Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown found the Sinaloa Cartel seeks to monopolize legal and illegal fisheries along Mexico’s supply chain, dictating catch limits and sale destinations.
Poached species like sea cucumbers, totoaba, abalone, and sharks are smuggled to China in exchange for precursor chemicals used in fentanyl and methamphetamine production. This helps TCOs evade money laundering laws.
The U.S. State Department designated eight TCOs as foreign terrorist organizations in February 2025, including Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and six Mexican groups: Gulf Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, New Michoacan Family, Northeast Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel, and United Cartels. Five more groups, including Los Lobos and Los Choneros, were added from September to December 2025.
David Saucedo, a security analyst quoted in USA Today in 2024, said drug cartels have diversified since inception, with many starting as criminal organizations whose main activity was not drug trafficking.
The first narco-sub was reported in September 2000 when Colombian police found a half-built vessel in a Bogotá warehouse. It was 36 meters long, 4 meters high, and designed to carry 15 metric tons of cocaine. By the 2020s, narco-subs were more common; in October 2024, Mexican sailors intercepted one holding about 2,200 kilograms of narcotics in a risky helicopter maneuver.
TCOs began expanding their empires long before the FTO designations, shifting from drugs to other ventures as part of their business evolution.
