FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump will host a roundtable 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 established on his first day in office to snuff out threats from criminal cartels in the U.S.
“The President’s Homeland Security Task Forces are a landmark achievement that highlight what the federal government can achieve with a leader like President Trump who is willing to slash red tape, increase coordination and put the safety of the American people first,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital of the event.
“In a short period of time, the Trump Administration has removed lethal drugs, illegal weapons, dangerous foreign terrorists and cartel members from American communities,” she added. “The American people are safer today because of the HSTFs — and they’re just getting started.”
Trump established the creation of Homeland Security Task Forces Jan. 20 — his first day back in office — via executive order, “Protecting the American People from Invasion.” The executive order directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to establish such task forces in each state as part of the administration’s efforts to thwart cartels and human trafficking networks operating on U.S. soil.
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The executive order specifically directed the task forces to “end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States, dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks, end the scourge of human smuggling and trafficking, with a particular focus on such offenses involving children, and ensure the use of all available law enforcement tools to faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States.”
On Thursday, administration officials will join Trump to provide updates 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 learned.
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Fox News Digital learned that the task forces nationwide became fully operational at the end of August and have yielded thousands of arrests, and the removal of dangerous drugs and illegal firearms from U.S. streets.
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More than 3,000 foreign terrorists and cartel members were arrested as part of the task forces’ operations, including members of notoriously dangerous gangs such as the Sinaloa Cartel, MS-13 and Cartel Jalisco Nuevo Genaracion, Fox News Digital learned.
The task forces also have 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 U.S. communities.
Trump campaigned, in part, on removing violent illegal immigrants and crime from U.S. communities, spotlighting the efforts in his address before Congress back in March 2025.
“The territory to the immediate south of our border is now dominated entirely by criminal cartels that murder, rape, torture and exercise total control. They have total control over a whole nation. posing a grave threat to our national security,” Trump said at the time. “The cartels are waging war in America, and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels.”
The roundtable comes as the U.S. military carries out strikes on suspected drug cartel vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The strikes began in September and are part of Trump’s broader effort to dismantle transnational cartels by force.
Trump held a similar roundtable at the White House earlier in October, inviting independent journalists who have experienced Antifa’s violence firsthand to speak about their experiences as the administration targets the left-wing group’s protests outside immigration facilities and recently designating it a “domestic terrorist organization.”