U.S. Commandos Join Ecuador in First Land Operation Targeting Drug Cartel

American special operations forces crossed a significant threshold on March 3, 2026, stepping onto Ecuadorian soil alongside local troops to raid a coastal compound linked to Los Choneros, one of the Western Hemisphere's most dangerous criminal organizations. Dubbed Operation Lanza Marina, the joint raid marked the first time the Trump administration deployed U.S. forces in a land operation as part of its escalating campaign against Latin American drug cartels, a shift from the airstrikes that had defined the effort since September 2025.

Two U.S. officials familiar with the mission, speaking anonymously, said American commandos served in advisory roles, providing planning, intelligence, and operational support as Ecuadorian forces moved against a compound believed to function as a staging ground for the high-speed boats Los Choneros uses to push cocaine through Pacific coastal routes. The specific location of the compound was not disclosed publicly.

In the days before the raid, SOUTHCOM Commander Marine Gen. Francis L. Donovan flew to Quito to meet with President Daniel Noboa and senior Ecuadorian defense officials. "We commend the men and women of the Ecuadorian armed forces for their unwavering commitment to this fight, demonstrating courage and resolve through continued actions against narco-terrorists in their country," Donovan said.

Los Choneros is not a peripheral player. The National Counter Terrorism Center assesses the organization has approximately 12,000 members operating in at least 10 Ecuadorian provinces, with reach extending into Colombia and Peru. The group formed in the 1990s on a franchise model and has since embedded itself as the Sinaloa Cartel's armed wing inside Ecuador, while also cultivating ties to Albanian criminal networks to move product onto European markets. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Los Choneros, along with Los Lobos, a group linked to Mexico's Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists on September 4, 2025.

The backdrop to that designation is stark. Ecuador's national homicide rate climbed from roughly 6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 44.5 per 100,000 in 2023, the highest recorded rate in Latin America and among the highest globally. The surge followed 2018 partnerships between local gangs and Mexican cartels, which ignited prison riots and territorial wars across the country. Noboa, who declared an "internal armed conflict" in January 2024 and won re-election in April 2025 on a platform of iron-fist enforcement, has stated that approximately 70 percent of the world's cocaine passes through Ecuadorian ports. Ecuador seized 214 tons of drugs in 2025, a decline from nearly 295 tons the year before.

Operation Lanza Marina is part of the broader U.S. anti-cartel effort known as Operation Southern Spear. Since September 2, 2025, U.S. Southern Command has conducted at least 47 airstrikes on alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing approximately 163 people. Those strikes have drawn sustained legal scrutiny: Human Rights Watch and law-of-war experts have argued the campaign violates international law, contending that no legal armed conflict framework justifies lethal force against the targets and that none of those killed have been publicly identified or shown to have posed an imminent threat.

The legal architecture for U.S. troops operating in Ecuador was formalized through a 2024 Status of Forces Agreement. Under that framework, Ecuador has grown into the second-largest recipient of U.S. security assistance in the Western Hemisphere after Colombia, receiving Foreign Military Financing, C-130 Hercules aircraft, mobile police barracks, and special operations training for Ecuadorian Army units. In December 2025, U.S. Special Forces advisors embedded with Ecuador's 4th Army Division in Esmeraldas province, which borders Colombia and serves as a primary cocaine corridor, supported a separate operation that seized 1.4 metric tons of cocaine. U.S. Air Force elements were simultaneously repositioned at Eloy Alfaro Air Base in Manta, a facility that previously hosted a U.S. forward operating base in the early 2000s.

The day after Operation Lanza Marina was announced, the United States hosted the inaugural Americas Counter Cartel Conference at SOUTHCOM headquarters, signaling that the ground operation was less an isolated action than the opening move of a broader phase in U.S. military engagement across the region.