In his first year in office, Donald Trump has ramped up the US’s military presence in Latin America, personally involved himself in national elections, pressed regional leaders on migration, designated drug cartels as terrorist groups and disrupted trade relations with an aggressive tariff policy.
The new US National Security Strategy states that the government “will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” — referring to the 1823 declaration by President James Monroe that the United States should have hegemony over the Western Hemisphere and the American continent.
To better understand the relationship between the United States and its southern neighbors, here are seven charts providing context on recent trends on migration, security, geopolitics and trade.
1. Migration: Latin Americans are 50% of migrants in the US and make up over 90% of the people deported
More than 50 million of the 340 million inhabitants of the United States were born abroad, according to annual data published by the US Census Bureau. About 25 million came from Latin America and the Caribbean.
At more than 11 million, Mexicans are the largest group of Latin American migrants to the United States. With about 1.7 million migrants in the US, Cuba is a distant second, followed by El Salvador with 1.5 million.
Large-scale migration from Latin America started in the 1960s. There has been a significant increase in migration to the United States from all over the world since 2020, but the spike is especially notable for Latin America. Venezuela and Colombia are among the primary places of origin for this more recent group of migrants, according to the Pew Research Center, which makes projections based on monthly survey data.
Trump launched his 2015 presidential campaign by associating migration from Mexico with drugs, rape and other crimes. Ten years later, he employs the same rhetoric, saying, for example, that Venezuela’s government deliberately released criminals from jail and sent them to the United States — a claim for which there is no evidence.
Along with continuing to employ the inflammatory language, Trump has taken steps to fulfill his announced plans of mass deportation. For example, he removed temporary protections from 600,000 Venezuelans who were previously allowed to live and work in the United States.
Even before Trump took office, people from Latin America were the overwhelming majority of migrants removed from the United States by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
2. Security: Trump is officially designating Latin American cartels as terrorist organizations
Trump’s association of Latin American countries with drug trafficking and criminality has expanded to a broader geopolitical stance. To justify airstrikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs in Latin American seas, Trump has claimed that the United States is at war with terror groups.
In 2025 alone, the United States has designated 24 new groups as Foreign Terror Organizations (FTOs) — a legal classification that allows the US to seize assets and prosecute people alleged to have ties with them. Of those, 14 are Latin American drug cartels and criminal gangs such as the Cartel de Sinaloa, from Mexico, and Tren de Aragua, from Venezuela.
Before Trump, only eight organizations from Latin America had ever been designated as such. They were all left-wing guerrilla groups, such as Peru’s Sendero Luminoso and Colombia’s Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional.
The shift toward listing cartels and crime syndicates as terror organizations is unprecedented. No previous State Department briefs since 1997 reviewed by DW mention drug trafficking and criminal activities as justifications for inclusion in the FTO list. The vast majority of pre-Trump designations were for terror groups from Africa, the Middle East and other parts of Asia.
In an analysis published in Foreign Policy magazine, Tricia Bacon and Daniel Byman, professors at the American University and Georgetown University, respectively, write that these designations can increase tensions with the governments of countries where the cartels operate. “By switching the narrative from crime to terrorism, there is an implication that these governments are knowingly harboring terrorists, a far more damning charge than simply having ties to criminal organizations,” they write.
The designations do not legally authorize the use of military force. “Politically, labeling a group ‘terrorists’ may help justify military action and play better to U.S. audiences, but an FTO designation, by itself, does not provide expanded authorities,” they add.
3. Geopolitics: Trump is continuing the US tradition of interfering in Latin American politics. His openness about it might be new, but the practice is not.
Trump started his presidency by vowing to retake the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” within the United States. In August 2025, he increased tariffs on Brazilian imports in a failed effort to prevent Brazil’s Supreme Court from convicting far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro on several charges, including plotting a coup and attempting to abolish the democratic rule of law.
As Argentina prepared to vote in legislative elections in October, Trump tied a $20 billion (€17.2 billion) loan to the success of President Javier Milei’s far-right coalition — which some have credited with helping the bloc secure the most votes. He even sent the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean Sea, threatening Venezuela’s strongman leader, Nicolas Maduro, and has not ruled out invading the country altogether.
For many, these actions are evocative of the US’s Cold War-era interventions in Latin America, either with direct, open military action or with covert plans such as supporting allied groups, attempting assassinations and influencing elections.
In her book, “Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War,” Lindsey O’Rourke, a political science professor at Boston College, has identified 23 instances in which the United States tried to topple governments in Latin America from 1949 through 1989. They include covertly supporting coups against elected leaders in Chile and Brazil, repeatedly trying to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and invading Panama to oust dictator (and former ally) Manuel Noriega.
According to O’Rourke’s work, those actions were not exclusive to the Cold War, but part of a centurylong geopolitical strategy of asserting dominance in the Western Hemisphere. They often resulted in increased political instability in the targeted countries.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, claims that US foreign policy had overlooked its neighbors in recent years. Now, he says, the United States will focus on working with Latin American governments to secure borders and deter what he describes as a migrant invasion. “Some countries are cooperating with us enthusiastically — others, less so. The former will be rewarded,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in January, shortly before he embarked on his first official trip to Central America in February. “As for the latter, Mr. Trump has already shown that he is more than willing to use America’s considerable leverage to protect our interests.”
4. Trade: The US is no longer the undisputed trade leader in the Americas
The most recent data from UN Comtrade, a United Nations platform that tracks global commerce flows, shows that the United States is still the largest commercial partner of Latin American countries, but is no longer as dominant as in the past.
In 2024, the United States was the source of about 29% of overall imports for countries in Latin America — down from roughly 50% in 2000. Currently, the United States is the destination for 45% of Latin American exports, down from 49% in 2000.
Latin America’s dependence on US markets varies from country to country. Though some countries, such as Mexico, still rely heavily on the United States as their main commercial partner, many have been looking elsewhere.
Simultaneously, trade ties with China increased across Latin America. By 2024, the Asian superpower was the main trade partner of Brazil, Peru, Chile and Bolivia.
Trump’s tariff policy has hit some countries directly. Brazil, for example, faces a 50% levy on its exports to the United States, although many products are exempt. Mexico is currently negotiating to avoid the imposition of a 25% tariff. Additional charges on goods such as copper and steel could hit other economies as well.
“We’ll have to seek other partners to buy our products,” Brazilian President Lula da Silva said when the tariff was first announced in July. “It’s not like we can’t survive without the United States. If the United States doesn’t want to buy, we will find someone who wants to.”
Edited by: Milan Gagnon and Gianna Grün
All data, code and methodological choices can be found in the story’s Github repository.More data-driven stories by DW can be found here.
