BOSTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) – A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s push to terminate the legal status of more than 8,400 family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders who moved to the United States from seven Latin American countries.
Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction late on Saturday that prevents the Department of Homeland Security from ending the humanitarian parole granted to thousands of people from Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
They had been allowed to move to the United States under family reunification parole programs that were created or modernized by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
Since Republican President Donald Trump succeeded Biden, his administration has ramped up immigration enforcement with $170 billion budgeted for immigration agencies through September 2029, a historic sum.
Under the family reunification programs, U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, also known as green card holders, could apply to serve as sponsors for family members in those seven countries, letting them live in the U.S. while they waited for their immigrant visas to become available.
The Homeland Security Department said on December 12 it was ending the programs on the grounds that they were inconsistent with Trump’s immigration enforcement priorities and were abused to allow “poorly vetted aliens to circumvent the traditional parole process.”
The termination was originally set to take effect January 14, but Talwani issued a temporary restraining order blocking it for 14 days while she considered whether to issue Saturday’s longer-term injunction.
Talwani said the department, led by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, had provided no support for its fraud concerns or considered whether individuals could feasibly return to their home countries, where many had sold homes or left jobs.
“The Secretary could not provide a reasoned explanation of the agency’s change in policy without acknowledging these interests,” wrote Talwani, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama. “Accordingly, failure to do so was arbitrary and capricious.”
The department did not respond to a request for comment.
The ruling came in a class action lawsuit pursued by immigrant rights advocates challenging the administration’s broader rollback of temporary parole granted to hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Talwani earlier in that case blocked the administration from ending grants of parole to about 430,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, but the Supreme Court lifted her order, which an appeals court later overturned.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston;Editing by Helen Popper)
Get the Facts: Is Venezuela a primary drug trafficker to the United States?
OK, thank you very much. This is big stuff. And we appreciate you being here. Late last night. And early today. At my direction, the United States armed forces. Conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela. Overwhelming American military power, air, land and sea was used to launch *** spectacular assault. And it was an assault like people have not seen since. World War II. It was *** force against *** heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas. To bring outlaw dictator Nicolas Maduro to justice. This was one of the most stunning. Effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence. In American history. And if you think about it, we’ve done some, Other good ones like the, Attack on Soleimani. The attack on al-Baghdadi. And the Obliteration and decimation of the Iran nuclear sites. Just recently. In an operation known as Midnight Hammer. All perfectly executed and done. No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday or frankly in just *** short period of time. All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military working with US law enforcement successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night. It was. Dark, the, uh, lights of Caracas were largely turned off. Due to *** certain expertise that we have. It was dark and it was deadly. But captured along with his wife. Celia Flores. Both of whom now face American justice. Maduro and Flores have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. Jay Clayton for their campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States and its citizens. I want to thank the men and women of our military who achieved such an extraordinary success overnight. With breathtaking speed, power, precision, and competence. You rarely see anything like it. You’ve seen some raids in this country that didn’t go so well. They were an embarrassment. If you look back to Afghanistan or if you look back to The Jimmy Carter days, they were different days. We’re *** respected country again like maybe like never before. These highly trained warriors operating in collaboration with US law enforcement caught them in *** very ready position. They were waiting for us. They knew we had many ships out. In the sea we just sort of waiting. They knew we were coming, so they were in *** ready, what’s called *** ready position. But they were completely overwhelmed and very quickly incapacitated. If you would have seen what I saw last night, you would have been very impressed. I’m not sure that you’ll ever get to see it, but it was an incredible thing to see. Not *** single American service member was killed and not *** single piece of American equipment was lost. We had many helicopters, many planes, many. Many people involved in that fight. But think of that not one piece of military equipment was lost, not one service member was more importantly killed. The United States military is the strongest and most fearsome military on the planet by far, with capabilities and skills, our enemies can. Scarcely begin to imagine we have the best equipment anywhere in the world. There’s no equipment like what we have, and you see that even if you just look at the boats, you know, we’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by sea. 90%. Each boat kills 25 on average 25,000 people. We knocked out 97%. And those drugs mostly come from *** place called Venezuela. We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do *** safe, proper, and judicious transition, so. We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years, so we are going to run the country until such time as we can do *** safe, proper, and judicious transition, and it has to be judicious. Because that’s what we’re all about. We want peace, liberty and justice for the great people of Venezuela. And that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back to their country, it’s their homeland. We can’t take *** chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind. Had decades of that. We’re not going to let that happen. We’re there now, and what people don’t understand, but they understand as I say this, we’re there now, but we’re. Going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place, so we’re going to stay until such time as we’re going to run it essentially until such time as *** proper transition can take place. As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been *** bust, *** total bust for *** long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could. have been pumping and what could have taken place. We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure. And start making money for the country. And we are Ready to stage *** second and much larger attack if We need to do so, so we were prepared to do *** second wave. If We needed to do so. We actually assumed that *** second wave would be necessary, but now it’s probably not. The first wave, if you’d like to call it that, the first attack was so successful we probably don’t have to do *** second, but we’re prepared to do *** second wave, *** much bigger wave actually. This was pinpoint, but we have *** much bigger wave that. Probably won’t have to do this partnership of Venezuela with the United States of America, *** country that everybody wants to be involved with because of what we were able to do and accomplish, will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent, and safe, and it will also make the many, many people from Venezuela that are living in the United States extremely happy. They suffered. They suffered. So much was taken from them. They’re not going to suffer anymore. The illegitimate dictator Maduro was the kingpin of *** vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States. As alleged in the indictment, he personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de las Solis. Which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans, the many, many Americans, hundreds of thousands over the years of Americans died because of him. Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil. Right now they’re on *** ship they’ll be heading to ultimately New York and then *** decision will be made, I assume between New York and. Miami or Florida. But we have People where the overwhelming evidence of their crimes will be presented in *** court of law, and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what we have. It’s It’s both horrible and breathtaking that something like this could have been allowed to take place. For many years after his term as president of Venezuela expired, Maduro remained in power and waged *** ceaseless campaign of violence, terror, and subversion against the United States of America, threatening not only our people but the stability of the entire region. And you also, in addition to trafficking gigantic amounts of illegal drugs. That inflicted untold suffering and human destruction all over the country, all over, in particular the United States. Maduro sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang Tren de Arragua, to terrorize American communities nationwide, and he did indeed. They were in Colorado. They took over apartment complexes. They cut the fingers of people if they call police. They were brutal. But they’re not so brutal now? And I just have to Congratulate our military, Pete and everybody in our National Guard. Because the job that they’ve done, whether it’s in Washington DC where we have *** totally safe city where it was one of the most unsafe cities anywhere in the world, frankly, and now we have no crime in Washington DC. We haven’t had *** killing. We had the terrorist attack *** few weeks ago. Uh, *** little bit of *** different kind of ***, *** threat, but we haven’t had *** killing in *** long period of time, 67 months, we used to have 2, on average 2 *** week in Washington, our capital. We don’t have that anymore. The restaurants are opening. Everyone’s happy. They’re going, they’re walking their daughters, they’re walking their children, their wives, they walk to restaurants. Restaurants are opening all over Washington DC. So I want to thank the National Guard. I want to thank our military, and I want to thank law enforcement. It’s been amazing. And they should do it with more cities. We’re doing it, as you know, and uh we’re doing it in Memphis, Tennessee right now, and crime is down. We’ve just sort of started *** few weeks ago, but crime is down now 77%. And uh the governor of Louisiana called, great person. And he wanted us to help him, as you know, in *** certain very nice part of Louisiana, and we have done that and it’s *** rough, it was *** rough, rough section and we have climbed down. I, I understand it’s down to almost nothing already after 2.5 weeks. New Orleans, it’s down to almost nothing, and we’ve only been there for 2.5 weeks. Can’t imagine why governors wouldn’t want us to help. We also helped, as you know, in Chicago, and crime went down *** little bit there. We did *** very small help because we had no, no. We had no working ability with the governor. The governor was *** disaster and the mayor was *** disaster, but it knocked down crime. But we’re pulling out of there when they need us, we’ll know. You’ll know. You’ll be writing about it. And likewise Los Angeles, where we saved Los Angeles early on where the. Head of the police department made *** statement that if the federal government didn’t come in we would have lost Los Angeles. That’s after long after the fires. That’s when they had the riots in Los Angeles. We did *** great job. We got no credit for it whatsoever, but that’s OK. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need the credit. But we’ll be pulling out when they need us. They’ll call or we’ll go back if we have to. We’ll go back, but we did *** great job in various cities. But the thing, the place that we’re very proud of is Washington DC because it’s our nation’s capital. We took it from being *** crime ridden mess to being one of the safest cities in the country. But the gangs that they sent raped, tortured, and murdered American women and children. They were in all of the cities I mentioned, Trendaragua. And they were sent by Maduro to terrorize our people and now Maduro will never again be able to threaten an American citizen or anybody from Venezuela. There will no longer be threats. For years I’ve highlighted the stories of those innocent Americans whose lives. We’re so heartlessly robbed by this Venezuelan terrorist organization, really one of the worst, one of the worst, they say the worst. Americans like 12 year old Jocelyn Nungary from Houston. Beautiful Jocelyn. Nungarary, what happened to her? They, uh, as you know, they kidnapped, assaulted and murdered by Trende Aragua. Animals they murdered Jocelyn. And Left her dead under the bridge. There was *** bridge. *** bridge that will never be the same to so many people after seeing what happened. As I’ve said many times, the Maduro regime emptied out their prisons, sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives, and they came from mental institutions and insane asylums. They came from prisons and jails. The reason I say both, they sound similar actually. Prisons, *** little bit more. *** little bit more hostile, *** little bit tougher. *** mental institution isn’t as tough as an insane asylum, but we got them both. They sent from their mental institutions. They sent from their jails, prisons. They were drug dealers. They were drug kingpins. They sent everybody bad into the United States. But no longer, and we have now *** border where nobody gets through. In addition, Venezuela. Unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars. They did this *** while ago, but we never had *** president that did anything about it. They took all of our property. It was our property. We built it. And we never had *** president that decided to do anything about it. Instead they fought wars that were 10,000 miles away. We built Venezuela oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country, considered the largest theft of property in the history of our country. Massive oil infrastructure was taken like we were babies, and we didn’t do anything about it. I would have done something about it. America will never allow foreign powers to rob our people or drive us back into. And out of our own hemisphere, that’s what they did. Furthermore, under the now deposed dictator Maduro, Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region. And acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten US interests and lives, and they used those weapons last night. They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border. All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy dating back more than two centuries. And uh not anymore all the way back it dated to the Monroe Doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is *** big deal, but we’ve superseded it by *** lot. By *** real lot. They now call it the Don Ro document. I don’t know. It’s, uh, Monroe Doctrine, we sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won’t happen. So just in concluding, for decades other administrations have neglected or even Contributed to these growing security threats in the Western Hemisphere. Under the Trump administration, we are reasserting American power in *** very powerful way. In our home region. And our home region is very different than it was just *** short while ago. The future will be, and we did this in my first term. We had great dominance in my first term, and We have far greater dominance right now. Everyone’s coming back to us. The future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce and territory and resources that are core to national security. These are core to our national security. Just like tariffs are, they’ve made our country rich and they’ve made our national security strong, stronger than ever before. But these are the iron laws that have always determined global power. And we’re going to keep it that way. We will secure our borders. We will stop the terrorists. We will crash the cartels, and we will defend our citizens against all threats, foreign and domestic. Other presidents may have lacked the courage or whatever to defend America, but I will never allow terrorists and criminals to operate with impunity against the United States. This extremely successful operation should serve as *** warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives. Very importantly, the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect. The American. Armada remains poised in position, and the United States retains all military options until the United States demands have been fully met and fully satisfied. All political and military figures in Venezuela should understand. What happened to Maduro can happen to them, and it will happen to them. If they aren’t just fair, even to their people, the dictator and terrorist Maduro. is finally gone in Venezuela. People are free. They’re free again. It’s been *** long time for them, but they’re free. America is *** safer nation. This morning It’s *** prouder nation this morning because it didn’t allow. This horrible person and this country that was Doing very bad things to us, it didn’t allow it to happen, and the Western Hemisphere is right now *** much safer place to be. So I want to thank everybody for being here. I want to thank General Raisin Kane. He’s *** fantastic man. I’ve worked with *** lot of generals. I worked with some I didn’t like. I worked with some I didn’t respect. I worked with some that just weren’t good. But this guy is fantastic. I watched last night one of the most precise. Attacks on sovereignty. I mean it was an attack for justice and I’m very proud of him and I’m very proud of our Secretary of War Pete Hegseth who I’m going to ask to say *** few words. Thank you very much.
The Trump administration has set its sights on Venezuela in its latest campaign against illegal drugs, but data shows that the country is responsible for just a sliver of drug trafficking directly to the United States. The Get the Facts Data Team analyzed data on cocaine and fentanyl trafficking. While Venezuela is a player in cocaine manufacturing and trafficking, drug seizure data shows that it’s not as prominent a supplier of cocaine to the U.S. as other South American and Latin American countries. There is also no evidence that any significant level of illegal fentanyl — the primary killer in U.S. overdose deaths — is produced in South America, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).UNODC analyzes global drug trafficking based on reporting from its member states, open sources and drug seizure information.Most illegal fentanyl enters the U.S. from Mexico, per UNODC and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Illicit fentanyl can also be diverted, or stolen, from legal sources as medical professionals use the drug.Yet President Donald Trump has linked his administration’s attacks on drug vessels in Latin America to the fentanyl crisis, among other drugs.After the Sept. 19 attack on a boat in the Caribbean that killed three people, Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming that the boat was carrying drugs and headed for America. “STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA,” his post said. The next day, in a speech, Trump said that thousands are dying because of “boatloads” of fentanyl and drugs. He’s also repeatedly said that each boat strike would save 25,000 lives.As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35, and the number of people killed stands at least 115, according to the Trump administration.Previously, Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. Hearst Television’s partner PolitiFact labeled that 25,000 number mathematically dubious.Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3On Saturday, the Trump administration struck Venezuela in a new, stunning way, capturing its leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife. Both are being taken to the United States to face charges related to drug trafficking.The strike followed a monthslong Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.Venezuela’s role in cocaine traffickingVenezuela is not among the primary direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S. Like fentanyl, most cocaine enters the U.S. from Mexico and typically gets to Mexico via maritime transportation on both the Pacific and Caribbean sides, according to UNODC research officer Antoine Vella. Some also arrives in Mexico via land transportation.While the Trump administration’s early September attacks targeted Venezuelan boats, there is no known direct cocaine trade route from Venezuela to the U.S. via sea. The only known direct Venezuela to U.S. trafficking route is via air, according to drug seizure data from UNODC. Cocaine could still arrive from Venezuela to the U.S. through intermediary countries.Colombia, Ecuador and Panama are among the main direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S. via boat. From harvest to productionCoca, the plant that cocaine is made from, is grown primarily in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Once coca is harvested, the cocaine in the leaf needs to be extracted. That processing occurs at illegal manufacturing facilities around the globe.The three coca-growing countries also have the most illegal processing facilities. Colombia had by far the most of any country at about 26,400 detected and dismantled from 2019 to 2023, according to UNODC data. It’s followed by about 3,200 processing facilities in Bolivia and 2,400 in Peru. Venezuela, which neighbors Colombia, had about 260 illegal processing facilities detected and dismantled from 2019 to 2023, according to UNODC data. It’s ranked fifth among countries with the most processing facilities.”Every country that borders Colombia has an issue with cocaine in terms of cocaine trafficking,” Vella said. PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4=
The Trump administration has set its sights on Venezuela in its latest campaign against illegal drugs, but data shows that the country is responsible for just a sliver of drug trafficking directly to the United States.
The Get the Facts Data Team analyzed data on cocaine and fentanyl trafficking. While Venezuela is a player in cocaine manufacturing and trafficking, drug seizure data shows that it’s not as prominent a supplier of cocaine to the U.S. as other South American and Latin American countries.
There is also no evidence that any significant level of illegal fentanyl — the primary killer in U.S. overdose deaths — is produced in South America, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
UNODC analyzes global drug trafficking based on reporting from its member states, open sources and drug seizure information.
Yet President Donald Trump has linked his administration’s attacks on drug vessels in Latin America to the fentanyl crisis, among other drugs.
After the Sept. 19 attack on a boat in the Caribbean that killed three people, Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming that the boat was carrying drugs and headed for America. “STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA,” his post said.
The next day, in a speech, Trump said that thousands are dying because of “boatloads” of fentanyl and drugs. He’s also repeatedly said that each boat strike would save 25,000 lives.
As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35, and the number of people killed stands at least 115, according to the Trump administration.
Previously, Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. Hearst Television’s partner PolitiFact labeled that 25,000 number mathematically dubious.
Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3
On Saturday, the Trump administration struck Venezuela in a new, stunning way, capturing its leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife. Both are being taken to the United States to face charges related to drug trafficking.
The strike followed a monthslong Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.
Venezuela’s role in cocaine trafficking
Venezuela is not among the primary direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S.
Like fentanyl, most cocaine enters the U.S. from Mexico and typically gets to Mexico via maritime transportation on both the Pacific and Caribbean sides, according to UNODC research officer Antoine Vella. Some also arrives in Mexico via land transportation.
While the Trump administration’s early September attacks targeted Venezuelan boats, there is no known direct cocaine trade route from Venezuela to the U.S. via sea. The only known direct Venezuela to U.S. trafficking route is via air, according to drug seizure data from UNODC. Cocaine could still arrive from Venezuela to the U.S. through intermediary countries.
Colombia, Ecuador and Panama are among the main direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S. via boat.
From harvest to production
Coca, the plant that cocaine is made from, is grown primarily in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
Once coca is harvested, the cocaine in the leaf needs to be extracted. That processing occurs at illegal manufacturing facilities around the globe.
The three coca-growing countries also have the most illegal processing facilities. Colombia had by far the most of any country at about 26,400 detected and dismantled from 2019 to 2023, according to UNODC data. It’s followed by about 3,200 processing facilities in Bolivia and 2,400 in Peru.
Venezuela, which neighbors Colombia, had about 260 illegal processing facilities detected and dismantled from 2019 to 2023, according to UNODC data. It’s ranked fifth among countries with the most processing facilities.
“Every country that borders Colombia has an issue with cocaine in terms of cocaine trafficking,” Vella said.
Ron Curtis, an English professor in Montreal, lived for 40 years with a degenerative spinal disease, in what he called the “black hole” of chronic pain.
On a July day in 2022, Mr. Curtis, 64, ate a last bowl of vegetable soup made by his wife, Lori, and, with the help of a palliative care doctor, died in his bedroom overlooking a lake.
Aron Wade, a successful 54-year-old stage and television actor in Belgium, decided he could no longer tolerate life with the depression that haunted him for three decades.
Last year, after a panel of medical experts found he had “unbearable mental suffering,” a doctor came to his home and gave him medicine to stop his heart, with his partner and two best friends at his side.
Argemiro Ariza was in his early 80s when he began to lose function in his limbs, no longer able to care for his wife, who had dementia, in their home in Bogotá.
Doctors diagnosed A.L.S., and he told his daughter Olga that he wanted to die while he still had dignity. His children threw him a party with a mariachi band and lifted him from his wheelchair to dance. A few days later, he admitted himself to a hospital, and a doctor administered a drug that ended his life.
Until recently, each of these deaths would have been considered a murder. But a monumental change is underway around the world. From liberal European countries to conservative Latin American ones, a new way of thinking about death is starting to take hold.
Stephanie Nolen is exploring access, attitudes and approaches to medically assisted death around the world.
Over the past five years, the practice of allowing a physician to help severely ill patients end their lives with medication has been legalized in nine countries on three continents. Courts or legislatures, or both, are considering legalization in a half-dozen more, including South Korea and South Africa, as well as eight of the 31 American states where it remains prohibited.
It is a last frontier in the expansion of individual autonomy. More people are seeking to define the terms of their deaths in the same way they have other aspects of their lives, such as marriage and childbearing. This is true even in Latin America, where conservative institutions such as the Roman Catholic church are still powerful.
“We believe in the priority of our control over our bodies, and as a heterogeneous culture, we believe in choices: If your choice does not affect me, go ahead,” said Dr. Julieta Moreno Molina, a bioethicist who has advised Colombia’s Ministry of Health on its assisted dying regulations.
Yet, as assisted death gains more acceptance, there are major unresolved questions about who should be eligible. While most countries begin with assisted death for terminal illness, which has the most public support, this is often followed quickly by a push for wider access. With that push comes often bitter public debate.
Should someone with intractable depression be allowed an assisted death?
European countries and Colombia all permit people with irremediable suffering from conditions such as depression or schizophrenia to seek an assisted death. But in Canada, the issue has become contentious. Assisted death for people who do not have a reasonably foreseeable natural death was legalized in 2021, but the government has repeatedly excluded people with mental illness. Two of them are challenging the exclusion in court on the grounds that it violates their constitutional rights.
In public debate, supporters of the right to assisted death for these patients say that people who have lived with severe depression for years, and have tried a variety of therapies and medications, should be allowed to decide when they are no longer willing to keep pursuing treatments. Opponents, concerned that mental illness can involve a pathological wish to die, say it can be difficult to predict the potential effectiveness of treatments. And, they argue, people who struggle to get help from an overburdened public health service may simply give up and choose to die, though their conditions might have been improved.
Should a child with an incurable condition be able to choose assisted death?
The ability to consent is a core consideration in requesting assisted death. Only a handful of countries are willing to extend that right to minors. Even in the places that do, there are just a few assisted deaths for children each year, almost always children with cancer.
In Colombia and the Netherlands, children over 12 can request assisted death on their own. Parents can provide consent for children 11 and younger.
Denise de Ruijter took comfort in her Barbie dolls when she struggled to connect with people. She was diagnosed with autism and had episodes of depression and psychosis. As a teenager in a Dutch town, she craved the life her schoolmates had — nights out, boyfriends — but couldn’t manage it.
She attempted suicide several times before applying for an assisted death at 18. Evaluators required her to try three years of additional therapies before agreeing her suffering was unbearable. She died in 2021, with her family and Barbies nearby.
The issue is under renewed scrutiny in the Netherlands, where, over the past decade, a growing number of adolescents have applied for assisted death for relief from irremediable psychiatric suffering from conditions such as eating disorders and anxiety.
Most such applications by teens are either withdrawn by the patient, or rejected by assessors, but public concern over a few high-profile cases of teens who received assisted deaths prompted the country’s regulator to consider a moratorium on approvals for children applying on the basis of psychiatric suffering.
Should someone with dementia be allowed assisted death?
Many people dread the idea of losing their cognitive abilities and their autonomy, and hope to have an assisted death when they reach that point. But this is a more complex situation to regulate than for a person who can still make a clear request.
How can a person who is losing their mental capacity consent to dying? Most governments, and doctors, are too uncomfortable to permit it, even though the idea tends to be popular in countries with aging populations.
In Colombia, Spain, Ecuador and the Canadian province of Quebec, people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other kinds of cognitive decline can request assessment for an assisted death before they lose mental capacity, sign an advance request — and then have a physician end their life after they have lost the ability to consent themselves.
But that raises a separate, challenging, question: After people lose the capacity to request an assisted death, who should decide it’s time?
Their spouses? Their children? Their doctors? The government? Colombia entrusts families with this role. The Netherlands leaves it up to doctors — but many refuse to do it, unwilling to administer lethal drugs to a patient who can’t clearly articulate a rational wish to die.
Jan Grijpma was always clear with his daughter, Maria: When his mind went, he didn’t want to live any more. Maria worked with his longtime family doctor, in Amsterdam, to identify the point when Mr. Grijpma, 90 and living in a nursing home, was losing his ability to consent himself.
When it seemed close, in 2023, they booked the day, and he updated his day planner: Thursday, visit the vicar; Friday, bicycle with physiotherapy and get a haircut; Sunday, pancakes with Maria; Monday, euthanasia.
All of these questions are becoming part of the discussion as the right to control and plan one’s own death is pushed in front of reluctant legislatures and uneasy medical professionals.
Dr. Madeline Li, a Toronto psychiatrist, was given the task of developing the assisted-dying practice in one of Canada’s largest hospitals when the procedure was first decriminalized in 2015. She began with assessing patients for eligibility and then moved to providing medical assistance in dying, or MAID, as it is called in Canada. For some patients with terminal cancer, it felt like the best form of care she could offer, she said.
But then Canada’s eligibility criteria expanded, and Dr. Li found herself confronting a different kind of patient.
“To provide assisted dying to somebody dying of a condition who is not happy with how they’re going to die, I’m willing to assist them, and hasten that death,” she said. “I struggle more with people who aren’t dying and want MAID — I think then you’re assisting suicide. If you’re not dying — if I didn’t give you MAID, you wouldn’t otherwise die — then you’re a person who’s not unhappy with how you’re going to die. You’re unhappy with how you’re living.”
Who has broken the taboo?
For decades, Switzerland was the only country to permit assisted death; assisted suicide was legalized there in 1942. It took a further half century for a few more countries to loosen their laws. Now decriminalization of some form of assisted death has occurred across Europe.
But there has recently been a wave of legalization in Latin America, where Colombia was long an outlier, having allowed legal assisted dying since 2015.
Paola Roldán Espinosa had a thriving career in business in Ecuador, and a toddler, when she was diagnosed with A.L.S. in 2023. Her health soon deteriorated to the point that she needed a ventilator.
She wanted to die on her terms — and took the case to the country’s highest court. In February 2024, the court responded to her petition by decriminalizing assisted dying. Ms. Roldán, then 42, had the death she sought, with her family around her, a month later.
Ecuador has decriminalized assisted dying through constitutional court cases, and Peru’s Supreme Court has permitted individual exceptions to the law which prohibits the procedure, opening the door to expansion. Cuba’s national assembly legalized assisted dying in 2023, although no regulations on how the procedure will work are yet in place. In October, Uruguay’s parliament passed a long-debated law allowing assisted death for the terminally ill.
The first country in Asia to take steps toward legalization is South Korea, where a bill to decriminalize assisted death has been proposed at the National Assembly several times but has not come to a vote. At the same time, the Constitutional Court, which for years refused to hear cases on the subject, has agreed to adjudicate a petition from a disabled man with severe and chronic pain who seeks an assisted death.
Access in the United States remains limited: 11 jurisdictions (10 states plus the District of Columbia) allow assisted suicide or physician-assisted death, for patients who have a terminal diagnosis, and in some cases, only for patients who are already in hospice care. It will become legal in Delaware on Jan. 1, 2026.
In Slovenia, in 2024, 55 percent of the population who voted in a national referendum were in favor of legalizing assisted death, and parliament duly passed a law in July. But pushback from right-wing politicians then forced a new referendum, and in late November, 54 percent of those who voted rejected the legalization.
And in the United Kingdom, a bill to legalize assisted death for people with terminal illness has made its way slowly through parliament. It has faced fierce opposition from a coalition of more than 60 groups for people with disabilities, who argue they may face subtle coercion to end their lives rather than drain their families or the state of resources for their care.
Why now?
In many countries, decriminalization of assisted dying has followed the expansion of rights for personal choice in other areas, such as the removal of restrictions on same-sex marriage, abortion and sometimes drug use.
“I would expect it to be on the agenda in every liberal democracy,” said Wayne Sumner, a medical ethicist at the University of Toronto who studies the evolution of norms and regulations around assisted dying. “They’ll come to it at their own speed, but it follows with these other policies.”
The change is also being driven by a convergence of political, demographic and cultural trends.
As populations age, and access to health care improves, more people are living longer. Older populations mean more chronic disease, and more people living with compromised health. And they are thinking about death, and what they will — and won’t — be willing to tolerate in the last years of their lives.
At the same time, there is diminishing tolerance for suffering that is perceived as unnecessary.
“Until very recently, we were a society where few people lived past 60 — and now suddenly we live much longer,” said Lina Paola Lara Negrette, a psychologist who until October was the director of the Dying With Dignity Foundation in Colombia. “Now people here need to think about the system, and the services that are available, and what they will want.”
Changes in family structures and communities, particularly in rapidly urbanizing middle-income countries, mean that traditional networks of care are less strong, which shifts how people can imagine living in older age or with chronic illness, she added.
“When you had many siblings and a lot of generations under one roof, the question of care was a family thing,” she said. “That has changed. And it shapes how we think about living, and dying.”
How does assisted dying work?
Beyond the ethical dilemmas, actually carrying out legalized assisted deaths involves countless choices for countries. Spain requires a waiting period of at least 15 days between a patient’s assessments (but the average wait in practice is 75 days). In most other places, the prescribed wait is less than two weeks for patients with terminal conditions, but often longer in practice, said Katrine Del Villar, a professor of constitutional law at the Queensland University of Technology who tracks trends in assisted dying
Most countries allow patients to choose between administering the drugs themselves or having a health care provider do it. When both options are available, the overwhelming majority of people choose to have a health care provider end their life with an injection that stops their heart.
In many countries only a doctor can administer the drugs, but Canada and New Zealand permit nurse practitioners to provide medically assisted deaths too.
One Australian state prohibits medical professionals from raising the topic of assisted death. A patient must ask about it first.
Who determines eligibility is another issue. In the Netherlands, two physicians assess a patient; in Colombia, it’s a panel consisting of a medical specialist, a psychologist and a lawyer. The draft legislation in Britain would require both a panel and two independent physicians.
Switzerland and the states of Oregon and Vermont are the only jurisdictions in the world that explicitly allow people who are not residents access to assisted deaths.
Most countries permit medical professionals to conscientiously object to providing assisted deaths and allow faith-based medical institutions to refuse to participate. In Canada, individual professionals have the right to refuse, but a court challenge is underway seeking to end the ability of hospitals that are controlled by faith-based organizations and that operate with public funds to refuse to allow assisted deaths on their premises.
“Even when assisted dying has been legal and available somewhere for a long time, there can be a gap between what is legal and what is acceptable — what most physicians and patients and families feel comfortable with,” said Dr. Sisco van Veen, an ethicist and psychiatrist at Amsterdam Medical University. “And this isn’t static. It evolves over time.”
Jin Yu Young in Seoul, José Bautista in Madrid, José María León Cabrera in Quito, Veerle Schyns in Amsterdam and Koba Ryckewaert in Brussels contributed reporting.
Wilmer Chavarria was living the good life after faking his own death.
For four years, the Ecuadorean drug boss allied with Mexico’s Jalisco cartel moved among Dubai, Morocco and Spain, allegedly overseeing his drug empire and hit jobs back home—all while staying at the most exclusive hotels, Ecuador’s government said. To avoid detection, he underwent seven surgeries to alter his appearance and changed his name to Danilo Fernández.
One of Ecuador’s most wanted drug traffickers was captured Sunday, years after he faked his death and moved to Spain.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa said that Wilmer Chavarria, also known as “Pipo,” was captured in the Spanish city of Malaga in a joint operation with Spanish police. In a message on X, Spain’s National Police posted a photo of Chavarria wearing a black and green track suit as he was escorted by police officers toward a patrol car.
Chavarria is believed to be the leader of Los Lobos, a drug trafficking group with around 8,000 fighters that was recently designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Los Lobos has been linked to political assassinations in Ecuador and has also been accused of working closely with Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Noboa said Chavarria faked his death in 2021 during the COVID pandemic, obtained a new identity and moved to Spain, from where he coordinated drug shipments, ordered assassinations and ran extortion rackets against gold mines in Ecuador.
Detenido en #Málaga el prófugo de la justicia de #Ecuador conocido como #Pipo líder de la banda #Lobos a la que se atribuye varios atentados en #Guayaquil
El fugitivo había fingido su muerte para evitar su arresto
Ecuador was one of the most peaceful countries in South America in the early 2010s. But the nation of 18 million people has experienced a spike in homicides and other violent crimes, as it becomes a key transit point for cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru. Drug trafficking gangs have attacked presidential candidates, municipal officials and journalists as they fight for control over ports and coastal cities.
Chavarria’s capture comes as Ecuadorians vote on a four-part referendum, where they will be asked if the nation’s constitution should be amended to allow foreign countries to run military bases in Ecuador.
Noboa has argued that this reform is necessary to further anti-drug cooperation with countries like the United States and increase pressure on drug traffickers.
The U.S. last year declared Los Lobos to be the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador and imposed sanctions of “Pipo.”
Earlier this year, another leader of Los Lobos, Carlos D, was arrested Friday at his home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. Widely known by his alias “El Chino,” he was the second-in-command of the crime syndicate and “considered a high-value target.”
Criminal gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country’s biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías, who leads the Los Choneros gang, after his escape from a maximum-security prison in 2024. In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macias to the United States, where he faces multiple drug trafficking and firearms charges.
U.S. officials say Los Lobos emerged as a branch of hitmen working within Los Choneros, which rose to power independently in 2020 when a former Los Choneros leader’s assassination left cracks in the gang’s command structure. Los Lobos is accused in the assassination of Ecuador’s 2023 presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, and gang members are said to be responsible for deadly prison riots in addition to drug trafficking, murder-for-hire and illegal gold mining operations.
The U.S. plans to eliminate tariffs on bananas, coffee, beef and certain apparel and textile products under framework agreements with four Latin American nations, a senior administration official told reporters Thursday.
The expected move—which would apply to some goods from Ecuador, Argentina, El Salvador and Guatemala—is part of a shift from the Trump administration to water down some of its so-called reciprocal tariffs in the midst of rising prices for consumers, as well as legal uncertainty after a Supreme Court hearing this month.
Washington — The Trump administration has reached frameworks for reciprocal trade agreements with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador, the White House announced Thursday, although details of the frameworks are still emerging.
The tariff rate for most goods from Guatemala, El Salvador and Argentina will continue to be 10%, while Ecuador will remain at 15%, senior administration officials told reporters on a briefing call. But there will be tariff relief on a number of items, particularly those that can’t be grown in the U.S. Senior administration officials didn’t list those items, nor do the joint statements about the frameworks released by the White House, but one senior administration official anticipated that coffee and bananas from Ecuador, for instance, would see tariff relief.
“The United States commits to remove its reciprocal tariffs on certain qualifying exports from Ecuador that cannot be grown, mined, or naturally produced in the United States in sufficient quantities,” the framework joint statement for Ecuador released by the White House says.
Senior administration officials couldn’t provide details on how the trade agreements would affect the cost of goods like coffee, cocoa or bananas, which the U.S. imports from Central and South American nations, although one senior administration official said it would likely have “positive” effects.
Those specific commodities are important because “we don’t make those in the United States,” the official said.
“Our expectation is that there will be some positive effects for prices for things like coffee, cocoa, bananas,” the official said.
The White House said the administration will work to finalize the agreements in the coming weeks.
Senior administration officials said the agreement frameworks are largely focused on allowing those foreign markets to accept more U.S. goods. Generally, the agreements also aim to open up markets to import U.S. agricultural products and to prohibit imposing digital services taxes on U.S. companies.
A 16-year-old soccer player from the youth academy of Independiente del Valle was fatally shot when he was struck by a stray bullet at home in the port city of Guayaquil, police in Ecuador said Wednesday.
Miguel Nazareno was at home “when he unfortunately became a victim of the insecurity affecting our country,” the soccer team said in an Instagram post, citing a wave of criminal violence began in Ecuador almost five years ago.
“We extend our most sincere condolences and all our support to his family, friends, and teammates during this difficult time,” the team’s post added.
Nazareno, who played as a midfielder and forward, was the victim of a stray bullet, according to police.
Nazareno became at least the fourth soccer player killed by gunfire in Ecuador this year.
In September, Maicol Valencia and Leandro Yépez, both from Exapromo Costa, and Jonathan González, from 22 de Junio, were killed. Both Exapromo Costa and 22 de Junio are second-division squads.
Last month, Ecuadoran soccer player Bryan “Cuco” Angulo was shot in the foot when attending a training session.
Nazareno played for Independiente del Valle’s Under-18 team. Several Ecuadorian national team players who play for European clubs, such as Moisés Caicedo (Chelsea) and Piero Hincapié (Bayer Leverkusen), came up through the ranks at Independiente del Valle.
Playing soccer in Ecuador can be deadly, with match-fixing mafias part of a global criminal empire that earns gangs some $1.7 trillion per year, according to a recent United Nations estimate.
Surging violence in Ecuador
Since 2021, Ecuador has experienced growing criminal violence by gangs operating in coordination with Colombian and Mexican cartels involved in drug trafficking.
Strategically located between Colombia and Peru, two of the world’s largest cocaine producers, it has become a major transit hub for narcotics.
President Daniel Noboa has deployed troops to combat the violence — to little effect.
In the first half of this year, homicides in Ecuador increased by 47% compared to the same period in 2024, according to the national Observatory of Organized Crime.
Just last week, an Ecuadoran judge was killed while walking his children to school. Provincial police chief Colonel Giovanni Naranjo told reporters the Los Lobos gang — designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States — was suspected of the attack.
Also in October, authorities in Ecuador reported two attacks that left 14 people dead and 17 wounded, with some of the victims showing signs of torture.
Criminal gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country’s biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías after his escape from a maximum-security prison in 2024. In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macias to the United States, where he faces multiple drug trafficking and firearms charges.
Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the city of Anconcito juts out from the western coast of Ecuador into the strong waves.
It’s a life by the sea, and when one artisanal fisherman set out for his catch earlier this year, he noticed an odd bird. It was fluffy and gray and later identified as a rare Salvin’s albatross, part of a group of large sea-faring birds.
But it was struggling.
The fisherman called local authorities who came to look at the bird, and after consultation with a veterinary specialist and medical tests, they found that the juvenile bird had swallowed not only fishing line but also four hooks, according to a Nov. 4 news release from the New Zealand Department of Conservation and the American Bird Conservancy.
X-ray imaging showed the hooks lodged inside the bird’s body, and veterinarians took on a challenging surgery to remove the pieces without damaging the young bird.
Fishing line and four hooks were found inside the young bird’s body. Ruben Aleman, Fundación Juvimar Shared by the New Zealand Department of Conservation
“Thanks to the timely report from an artisanal fisher, we were able to rescue this Salvin’s albatross that had been grounded for several days in the port of Anconcito,” Giovanny Suárez Espín, Ecuador seabird bycatch coordinator for the American Bird Conservancy , said in the release. “Through coordination with the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment’s local representative and a specialized veterinarian, we successfully removed four fishing hooks, including one that caused injuries to its oesophagus.”
When they were able to see the material outside the bird, officials found it resembled the equipment used by artisanal mahi-mahi fishers, according to the release.
The albatross was rehabilitated and released back to the wild in a neighboring area in October, officials said.
The line and hooks were carefully removed. Ruben Aleman, Fundación Juvimar Shared by the New Zealand Department of Conservation
Salvin’s albatross spend most of their lives flying and typically forage near New Zealand and Australia around their breeding period. When they do land to breed, they find rugged areas on “remote Subantarctic Islands” hundreds of miles south from their normal areas, according to the release.
Once they are done breeding, they fly up the Pacific coast of South America searching for food, where a young bird could have picked up some hooks and line.
The conservation status of Salvin’s albatross is considered nationally critical, but with such a wide geographic range, many countries contribute to their protection around the world.
“We work closely with the fishing industry in New Zealand and abroad to improve mitigation and minimise accidental deaths from bycatch,” Department of Conservation science adviser Johannes Fischer said in the release. “A better understanding of the distribution of Salvin’s albatross and other seabirds is crucial to help protect them. While we collect tracking data from devices attached to adult Salvin’s albatross, currently information on the movements of juveniles comes solely from observations.”
The bird was released back into the wild in October. Ruben Aleman, Fundación Juvimar Shared by the New Zealand Department of Conservation
Salvin’s albatross populations have declined from 88,000 breeding pairs about 50 years ago to 50,000, and adults only start breeding at the age of 11, according to the release.
The birds lay one egg each breeding cycle, so researchers may not see negative impacts facing young birds reflected in the population for nearly a decade.
Albatrosses mate for life and return to the same breeding site year after year, even if they spend the rest of their time alone, flying across vast oceans.
Anconcito is on the southwestern coast of Ecuador.
Irene Wright is a McClatchy Real-Time reporter. She earned a B.A. in ecology and an M.A. in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia and is now based in Atlanta. Irene previously worked as a business reporter at The Dallas Morning News. Support my work with a digital subscription
Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the city of Anconcito juts out from the western coast of Ecuador into the strong waves.
It’s a life by the sea, and when one artisanal fisherman set out for his catch earlier this year, he noticed an odd bird. It was fluffy and gray and later identified as a rare Salvin’s albatross, part of a group of large sea-faring birds.
But it was struggling.
The fisherman called local authorities who came to look at the bird, and after consultation with a veterinary specialist and medical tests, they found that the juvenile bird had swallowed not only fishing line but also four hooks, according to a Nov. 4 news release from the New Zealand Department of Conservation and the American Bird Conservancy.
X-ray imaging showed the hooks lodged inside the bird’s body, and veterinarians took on a challenging surgery to remove the pieces without damaging the young bird.
Fishing line and four hooks were found inside the young bird’s body. Ruben Aleman, Fundación Juvimar Shared by the New Zealand Department of Conservation
“Thanks to the timely report from an artisanal fisher, we were able to rescue this Salvin’s albatross that had been grounded for several days in the port of Anconcito,” Giovanny Suárez Espín, Ecuador seabird bycatch coordinator for the American Bird Conservancy , said in the release. “Through coordination with the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment’s local representative and a specialized veterinarian, we successfully removed four fishing hooks, including one that caused injuries to its oesophagus.”
When they were able to see the material outside the bird, officials found it resembled the equipment used by artisanal mahi-mahi fishers, according to the release.
The albatross was rehabilitated and released back to the wild in a neighboring area in October, officials said.
The line and hooks were carefully removed. Ruben Aleman, Fundación Juvimar Shared by the New Zealand Department of Conservation
Salvin’s albatross spend most of their lives flying and typically forage near New Zealand and Australia around their breeding period. When they do land to breed, they find rugged areas on “remote Subantarctic Islands” hundreds of miles south from their normal areas, according to the release.
Once they are done breeding, they fly up the Pacific coast of South America searching for food, where a young bird could have picked up some hooks and line.
The conservation status of Salvin’s albatross is considered nationally critical, but with such a wide geographic range, many countries contribute to their protection around the world.
“We work closely with the fishing industry in New Zealand and abroad to improve mitigation and minimise accidental deaths from bycatch,” Department of Conservation science adviser Johannes Fischer said in the release. “A better understanding of the distribution of Salvin’s albatross and other seabirds is crucial to help protect them. While we collect tracking data from devices attached to adult Salvin’s albatross, currently information on the movements of juveniles comes solely from observations.”
The bird was released back into the wild in October. Ruben Aleman, Fundación Juvimar Shared by the New Zealand Department of Conservation
Salvin’s albatross populations have declined from 88,000 breeding pairs about 50 years ago to 50,000, and adults only start breeding at the age of 11, according to the release.
The birds lay one egg each breeding cycle, so researchers may not see negative impacts facing young birds reflected in the population for nearly a decade.
Albatrosses mate for life and return to the same breeding site year after year, even if they spend the rest of their time alone, flying across vast oceans.
Anconcito is on the southwestern coast of Ecuador.
Irene Wright is a McClatchy Real-Time reporter. She earned a B.A. in ecology and an M.A. in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia and is now based in Atlanta. Irene previously worked as a business reporter at The Dallas Morning News. Support my work with a digital subscription
Ecuadorian native Jessica Supliguicha sat inside her Queens apartment, cradling her month-old baby. She wept as she thought of her husband, Jorge, who had never met the girl she held in her arms; he had been deported to Ecuador three days before their baby was born.
“I don’t know where I get the strength to survive,” Supliguicha said with tears welling in her eyes.
The tot’s father was taken into custody by ICE agents inside 26 Federal Plaza on Sept. 6; meanwhile, his eight-month pregnant wife was outside of the building waiting to reunite with him. Although other families emerged, Jorge never came out. A lawyer called Supliguicha frantically, stating that Jorge had been detained.
It was a moment that not only left her traumatized, with only a month post-partum, she would now be unable to provide for her family. Hearing his mother sob softly, her 9-year-old son Dylan sidled over to her and embraced her.
How Jorge and Jessica met
Photo by Dean MosesEcuadorian native Jessica Supliguicha sat inside her Queens apartment, cradling her month-old baby. She wept as she thought of her husband, Jorge, who had never met the girl she held in her arms. Heartbreakingly for Supliguicha, Jorge was deported to Ecuador three days before their baby was born.Photo by Dean Moses
amNewYork followed Supliguicha as she went about her daily life — preparing food for the newborn and folding laundry while Dylan watched YouTube videos and took his Halloween costume for a test spin.
“It’s Huggy Wuggy!” the boy exclaimed, disappearing into a blue fury costume. Dylan also explained that he was preparing for the Big Halloween dance at school, something he was brimming with excitement over.
“It’s Huggy Wuggy!” the boy exclaimed, disappearing into a blue fury costume. Dylan also explained that he was preparing for the Big Halloween dance at school, something he was brimming with excitement over.Photo by Dean Moses
Despite both of them attempting to put on a brave face, a sense of sadness and despair clung to the walls and ceilings of the home, a pressure that felt as though it added weight to each movement.
Dylan was born out of a previous marriage, but Jorge was, for all intents and purposes, his father — serving as the patriarch he did not have.
“Jorge came to fill up that emptiness that Dylan needed,” Supliguicha said.
Now, Dylan is left without a father figure and feels that the only friend he has is his cat.
For Jorge and Supliguicha, it was a time-old romance of two friends who just never got the timing right. They had known each other since they were just 15 years old, but it wasn’t until 20 years later that fate struck when they reconnected in 2023.
Both already had families and kids, but something changed this time. Supliguicha saw Jorge with different eyes.
Both still feared the violence that continued to brew in their motherland. While Supliguicha became a citizen in 2023 after ten years of residency, Jorge had fled stateside after one of his brothers was killed in Ecuador by a gang. When they both found each other in New York, they also discovered comfort in one another and fell in love.Photo by Dean Moses
Both still feared the violence that continued to brew in their motherland. While Supliguicha became a citizen in 2023 after 10 years of residency, Jorge had fled stateside after one of his brothers was killed in Ecuador by a gang.
When they met in New York, they also discovered comfort in each other and fell in love.
Jorge was attempting to resolve the situation with his papers since he had a deportation order that had to be amended because he was marrying a US citizen and his wife was pregnant. They fitted him with an ankle monitor without explanation; he wore the monitor when they tied the knot.
After four days of marriage, Jorge received a letter stating that he had to appear in court on Sept. 6. He complied with the order, and was subsequently taken into custody by ICE. Supliguicha has not seen him since.
“I felt that the world was coming to an end,” Supliguicha said. “They change your life overnight.”
Photo by Dean MosesPhoto by Dean Moses
She was shocked from the moment she lost Jorge in the hands of ICE, and as the days passed, she entered the final month of her pregnancy and fell into a depressive state.
“I became anemic. She (her baby) was underweight,” Supliguicha said.
Between tears, Supliguicha remembered how she felt the moment they gave her her child, Maite Cristina, after giving birth on Oct. 5. She explains how her pregnancy was an at-risk one, since she had miscarried in the past.
Photo by Dean MosesPhoto by Dean Moses
“She was a girl that I was going to lose from the beginning. She overcame many things(during the pregnancy). But, I never thought that at eight months she would also have to overcome the absence of her father,” Supliguicha said.
Still, something was missing: Jorge.
Currently, Jorge is hiding in Ecuador, where he could be persecuted and killed. Supliguicha fears for her husband’s life, with the continued violence on the streets and his brother being murdered by gang members, Jorge is in hiding to survive.
The dread for her husband’s life and whether her family will ever see him again is an unbearable weight Supliguicha must carry while caring for her family alone.
“A former sister in law got involved with that gang of robberies and drugs. His family was harmed.” Supliguicha explains why her husband is in danger in Ecuador. “He couldn’t prove here with facts that he was in danger. Right now, he is in danger. He’s always hiding. He doesn’t go out much.”
Both are waiting for the I-130 form, a petition used by U.S. citizens to bring a non-citizen relative who wants to come to the U.S, to be approved.
In the meantime, Supliguicha plans to return to work in three weeks because she is struggling to make ends meet and cannot afford the rent.
Despite both of them attempting to put on a brave face, a sense of sadness and despair clung to the walls and ceilings of the home, a pressure that felt as though it added weight to each movement.Photo by Dean Moses
Supliguicha created a GoFundMe account to help support her family. She hopes for the future to reunify the family and wishes her daughter to be able to grow with her father.
“All I can do is move forward and find a way to do things the way they’re supposed to be. Hoping that the paperwork will one day be approved,” she said.
At the same time, she emphasizes that her situation is not unique, but rather one of many.
“I would like them to stop and give them the opportunity for the people who were deported to be reunited, to be together again. Experiencing family separation is awful. My daughter is very young; she can’t understand, but there are older children who can. My husband’s daughters, who were also left without a father,” Supliguichia said.
By Dean Moses, Amanda Moses, and Florencia Arozarena
MEXICO CITY — The Trump administration has widened its war on alleged drug boats, announcing on Tuesday that it had attacked four vessels off what Mexico said was its Pacific coast, a move condemned by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
The Pentagon said 14 people were killed in several strikes carried out Monday in international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. One survivor was rescued by Mexico’s navy, according to the Pentagon and Sheinbaum.
At her daily news conference Tuesday morning, Sheinbaum denounced the attacks and said she had asked Mexico’s ambassador to the United States to address them with officials in Washington.
“We do not agree with these attacks, with how they are carried out,” Sheinbaum said. “We want all international treaties to be complied with.”
The Pentagon did not give exact geographic coordinates of the attacks. In a post on X, Mexico’s navy said that at the behest of the U.S. Coast Guard, it conducted a search-and-rescue operation 400 miles south of the Pacific resort city of Acapulco.
The latest strikes mark a new theater in the U.S. military campaign against alleged drug traffickers. In recent months, the military has massed thousands of troops, war ships and fighter jets in the Caribbean ocean to combat drug traffickers, which White House officials have branded “narco terrorists.”
At least 57 people have been killed in a series of U.S. strikes on supposed traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many experts say the strikes violate U.S. and international law.
The strikes have provoked outcry throughout Latin America. After Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the U.S. for “murdering” Colombian civilians in strikes off the coast of his country, the U.S. Treasury Department responded by sanctioning him and several members of his family.
U.S. officials have been warning for months that they may carry out strikes on drug trafficking targets in Mexico. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said that she opposes unilateral U.S. military action in her nation and that Mexico would treat such a strike as an act of war.
But with her government currently locked in negotiations with the White House over President Trump’s aim to increase tariffs on Mexican imports, Sheinbaum has had to tread carefully. On Monday, she said that she spoke with Trump over the weekend and that the U.S. had agreed to give Mexico more time to make trade policy changes to avoid an increase in tariffs that had been set to go into effect this week.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted footage of Monday’s strikes to social media in which two boats can be seen moving at speed through the water. One is visibly laden with a large amount of parcels or bundles. Both then suddenly explode and are seen aflame.
The third strike appears to have been conducted on a pair of boats that were stationary in the water alongside each other. They appear to be largely empty with at least two people seen moving before an explosion engulfs both boats.
Hegseth said “the four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics.”
From the depths of Brazil’s Amazon to Indonesia’s rainforests, some of the world’s most isolated peoples are being squeezed by roads, miners and drug traffickers — a crisis unfolding far from public view or effective state protection.
A new report by Survival International, a London-based Indigenous rights organization, attempts one of the broadest tallies yet, identifying at least 196 uncontacted Indigenous groups in 10 countries, primarily in the South American nations sharing the Amazon rainforest. Released Sunday, the report estimates that nearly 65% face threats from logging, about 40% from mining and around 20% from agribusiness.
“These are what I would call silent genocides – there are no TV crews, no journalists. But they are happening, and they’re happening now,” said Fiona Watson, Survival’s research and advocacy director, who has worked on Indigenous rights for more than three decades.
The issue often receives little priority from governments, which critics say see uncontacted peoples as politically marginal because they don’t vote and their territories are often coveted for logging, mining and oil extraction. Public debate is also shaped by stereotypes – some romanticize them as “lost tribes,” while others view them as barriers to development.
Survival’s research concludes that half of these groups “could be wiped out within 10 years if governments and companies do not act.”
Who the uncontacted peoples are
Uncontacted peoples are not “lost tribes” frozen in time, Watson said. They are contemporary societies that deliberately avoid outsiders after generations of violence, slavery and disease.
“They don’t need anything from us,” Watson said. “They’re happy in the forest. They have incredible knowledge and they help keep these very valuable forests standing – essential to all humanity in the fight against climate change.”
Survival’s research shows that more than 95% of the world’s uncontacted peoples live in the Amazon, with smaller populations in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These communities live by hunting, fishing and small-scale cultivation, maintaining languages and traditions that predate modern nation-states.
Why contact can be deadly
Groups living in voluntary isolation have “minimal to no contact with those outside of their own group,” said Dr. Subhra Bhattacharjee, director general of the Forest Stewardship Council and an Indigenous rights expert based in Bonn, Germany. “A simple cold that you and I recover from in a week … they could die of that cold.”
Beyond disease, contact can destroy livelihoods and belief systems. International law requires free, prior and informed consent – known as FPIC – before any activity on Indigenous lands.
“But when you have groups living in voluntary isolation, who you cannot get close to without risking their lives, you cannot get FPIC,” Bhattacharjee said. “No FPIC means no consent.”
Her organization follows a strict policy: “No contact, no-go zones,” she said, arguing that if consent cannot be obtained safely, contact should not occur at all.
The Associated Press reported last year on loggers who were killed by bow and arrow after entering Mashco Piro territory in Peru’s Amazon, with Indigenous leaders warning that such clashes are inevitable when frontier zones go unpoliced.
Members of the Mashco Piro Indigenous community, a reclusive tribe and one of the world’s most withdrawn, gather on the banks of the Las Piedras river where they have been sighted coming out of the rainforest more frequently in search of food and moving away from the growing presence of loggers, in Monte Salvado, in the Madre de Dios province, Peru, June 27, 2024.
Survival International/Handout via REUTERS
There have been several other previous reports of conflicts. In one incident in 2022, two loggers were shot with arrows while fishing, one fatally, in an encounter with tribal members.
In 2018, American John Allen Chau was killed after kayaking to a remote Indian island populated by an isolated tribe known for shooting at outsiders with bows and arrows.
How the threats have evolved
Watson, who has worked across the Amazon for 35 years, said early threats stemmed from colonization and state-backed infrastructure. During Brazil’s military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985, highways were bulldozed through the rainforest “without due regard” for the people living there.
“The roads acted as a magnet for settlers,” she said, describing how loggers and cattle ranchers followed, bringing gunmen and disease that wiped out entire communities.
A railway line now planned in Brazil could potentially affect three uncontacted peoples, she said, but the rise of organized crime poses an even greater risk.
Across Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, drug traffickers and illegal gold miners have moved deep into Indigenous territories. “Any chance encounter runs the risk of transmitting the flu, which can easily wipe out an uncontacted people within a year of contact,” she said. “And bows and arrows are no match for guns.”
Evangelical missionary incursions have also caused outbreaks. Watson recalled how, under former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an evangelical pastor was placed in charge of the government’s unit for uncontacted peoples and gained access to their coordinates. “Their mission was to force contact – to ‘save souls,’” she said. “That is incredibly dangerous.”
Ways to protect uncontacted peoples
Protecting uncontacted peoples, experts say, will require both stronger laws and a shift in how the world views them – not as relics of the past, but as citizens of the planet whose survival affects everyone’s future.
Advocates have several recommendations.
First, governments must formally recognize and enforce Indigenous territories, making them off-limits to extractive industries.
Mapping is crucial, Bhattacharjee said, because identifying the approximate territories of uncontacted peoples allows governments to protect those areas from loggers or miners. But, she added, it must be done with extreme caution and from a distance to avoid contact that could endanger the groups’ health or autonomy.
Second, corporations and consumers must help stop the flow of money driving destruction. Survival’s report calls for companies to trace their supply chains to ensure that commodities such as gold, timber and soy are not sourced from Indigenous lands.
“Public opinion and pressure are essential,” Watson said. “It’s largely through citizens and the media that so much has already been achieved to recognize uncontacted peoples and their rights.”
Finally, advocates say the world must recognize why their protection matters. Beyond human rights, these communities play an outsized role in stabilizing the global climate.
“With the world under pressure from climate change, we will sink or swim together,” Bhattacharjee said.
Governments’ uneven response
International treaties such as the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirm the right to self-determination and to remain uncontacted if they choose. But enforcement varies widely.
In Peru, Congress recently rejected a proposal to create the Yavari-Mirim Indigenous Reserve, a move Indigenous federations said leaves isolated groups exposed to loggers and traffickers.
In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sought to rebuild protections weakened under Bolsonaro, boosting budgets and patrols. In 2018, footage showed an indigenous man believed to be the last remaining member of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
And in Ecuador, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled this year that the government failed to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples who live in voluntary isolation in Yasuni National Park.
Watson warned that political forces tied to agribusiness and evangelical blocs are now working to roll back earlier gains.
“Achievements of the last 20 or 30 years are in danger of being dismantled,” she said.
In July 2024, photos emerged of the uncontacted tribe searching for food on a beach in the Peruvian Amazon. Survival International said at the time the photos and videos posted showed about 53 male Mashco Piro. The group estimated as many as 100 to 150 tribal members would have been in the area with women and children nearby.
Members of the Mashco Piro Indigenous community, a reclusive tribe and one of the world’s most withdrawn, gather on the banks of the Las Piedras river where they have been sighted coming out of the rainforest more frequently in search of food and moving away from the growing presence of loggers, in Monte Salvado, in the Madre de Dios province, Peru, June 27, 2024.
Survival International/Handout via REUTERS
“This is irrefutable evidence that many Mashco Piro live in this area, which the government has not only failed to protect but actually sold off to logging companies,” Alfredo Vargas Pio, president of local Indigenous organization FENAMAD, said in a statement at the time.
A 2023 report by the United Nations’ special reporter on the rights of Indigenous peoples said Peru’s government had recognized in 2016 that the Mashco Piro and other isolated tribes were using territories that had been opened to logging. The report expressed concern for the overlap, and that the territory of Indigenous peoples hadn’t been marked out “despite reasonable evidence of their presence since 1999.”
What the new report calls for
Survival International’s report urges a global no-contact policy: legal recognition of uncontacted territories, suspension of mining, oil and agribusiness projects in or near those lands and prosecution of crimes against Indigenous groups.
Watson said logging remains the biggest single threat, but mining is close behind. She pointed to the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island, where nickel for electric-vehicle batteries is being mined.
“People think electric cars are a green alternative,” she said, “but mining companies are operating on the land of uncontacted peoples and posing enormous threats.”
In South America, illegal gold miners in the Yanomami territory of Brazil and Venezuela continue to use mercury to extract gold – contamination that has poisoned rivers and fish.
“The impact is devastating – socially and physically,” Watson said.
The U.S. is transferring two alleged drug traffickers to Colombia and Ecuador for detention and prosecution after they were briefly held on a U.S. Navy warship in the Caribbean, President Trump announced on Saturday.
The two people survived an attack on a submersible Thursday and were rescued by the U.S. military. They were taken to the USS Iwo Jima, which has been operating in the region and has a full medical staff, according to defense officials.
An Ecuadoran judge was killed Thursday while walking his children to school, and a professional soccer player was shot and wounded in the latest attacks attributed to criminal gang activity in the South American country.
Police said a gunman on a motorbike opened fire on judge Marcos Mendoza in the coastal town of Montecristi in Ecuador’s Manabi province, plagued by drug cartels.
Provincial police chief Colonel Giovanni Naranjo told reporters the Los Lobos gang — designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States — was suspected of the attack.
At least 15 judges or prosecutors have been killed in Ecuador since 2022, according to Human Rights Watch.
The Ecuadoran Judges’ Association said Mendoza’s “shocking” murder shined a light on the “vulnerability” of the country’s judges, writing on social media: “Without judicial security, no justice is possible.”
They “face pressure, threats, and risks every day for carrying out their duties with independence and courage,” it added.
Also Thursday, Ecuadoran soccer player Bryan “Cuco” Angulo, who has played for several Latin American clubs and for his country, was shot in the foot when attending a training session.
Police said two assailants were arrested, while Angulo’s club, Liga de Portoviejo, said in a social media post that several of its players “have received threats” ahead of a match against rivals Buhos ULRV on Friday.
Playing football in Ecuador can be deadly, with match-fixing mafias part of a global criminal empire that earns gangs some $1.7 trillion per year, according to a recent UN estimate.
Experts say gangs target second-division teams in Ecuador, where players are more susceptible due to their comparatively lower salaries.
Last year, police arrested a woman at one of Angulo’s homes and found a surveillance system there that had allegedly been used by criminal gangs.
“We do not rule out that the attack is related,” Manabi police chief Giovanni Naranjo said.
Ecuador, once considered one of Latin America’s safest nations, has seen a dramatic surge in violence in recent years.
Strategically located between Colombia and Peru, two of the world’s largest cocaine producers, it has become a major transit hub for narcotics.
President Daniel Noboa has deployed troops to combat the violence — to little effect.
In the first half of this year, homicides in Ecuador increased by 47 percent compared to the same period in 2024, according to the national Observatory of Organized Crime.
Earlier this week, authorities in Ecuador reported two attacks that left 14 people dead and 17 wounded, with some of the victims showing signs of torture.
Also this week, two explosions rocked different parts of Ecuador, less than 24 hours after a vehicle exploded in a port city in the South American country and left one person dead.
Interior Minister John Reimberg accused the Los Lobos gang and dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a now-defunct Colombian guerrilla movement with ties to the gang, of being behind the blasts.
Police officers stand guard at the site where a vehicle exploded outside a shopping mall, as a second vehicle containing explosives was found nearby, but did not detonate and was immediately neutralized, according to Ecuador’s Interior Minister John Reimberg, in Guayaquil, Ecuador October 14, 2025.
Vicente Gaibor Del Pino / REUTERS
Criminal gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country’s biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías after his escape from a maximum-security prison in 2024. In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macias to the United States, where he faces multiple drug trafficking and firearms charges.
Ecuador on Monday reported two attacks that left 14 people dead and 17 wounded, with some of the victims showing signs of torture.
The South American nation is a point of departure for cocaine shipments to the United States and Europe, and a hub for some 20 criminal groups involved in extortion and contract killings.
The first attack occurred around 11 pm Sunday (0400 GMT) in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city and the capital of Guayas province.
As many as seven people got off motorcycles and pickup trucks and fired shots at a neighborhood soccer game, local police colonel Carlos Fuentes told reporters.
The attack, which was attributed to the so-called Freddy Kruger gang, left six dead and 17 injured, including three minors who were at the sporting event.
Police also reported finding eight bodies in the town of Buena Fe, located in the southwestern province of Los Rios.
The victims, four men and four women, had “signs of torture” with their hands tied together with duct tape and “their heads covered in black bags,” according to a local police report.
Local media said the group were part of a larger group of 12 who had traveled to the area from the capital Quito. The other four members of the party, an older women and three girls, remain missing.
Ecuador recorded more than 4,600 homicides in the first half of the year, a 47% increase from the same period of 2024, data from the Ecuadoran Observatory of Organized Crime shows.
Once considered one of Latin America’s safest nations, Ecuador has seen a dramatic surge in violence in recent years as its location between two of the world’s largest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, has made it a major transit hub for narcotics.
The country has recently been rocked by deadly prison attacks linked to drug gangs. Last month, officials said 17 people were killed in a riot in an Ecuadoran prison, with rampaging inmates beheading and maiming rivals.
Just days before that, 13 prisoners and a guard were reported killed in southwest Ecuador. Officials said the dead inmates belonged to the rival Los Choneros and Los Lobos gangs, two of the biggest drug trafficking groups in Ecuador. The U.S. recently designated both gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias Fito, is the boss of the Los Choneros gang, and he was recaptured in June this year, more than a year after escaping prison. He had been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for involvement in organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.
In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Fito to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty to charges, including international cocaine distribution and smuggling firearms.
Clashes between drug gangs on Thursday claimed at least 17 lives in the second deadly riot in an Ecuadoran prison in days, with rampaging inmates beheading and maiming rivals, officials in the violence-wracked country said.
Bloody fighting broke out in a prison in the troubled coastal city of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border, where police said they found 10 dead prisoners in two cell blocks — adding to about 500 inmates massacred in the country since 2021.
Images shared on social media and verified by Agence France-Presse showed dead men sprawled on the ground with bare, blood-stained torsos, at least two of them decapitated.
Dozens of worried family members gathered outside the prison for news of their loved ones Thursday as the SNAI prison authority raised the official toll from 10 in the morning to 17 by lunchtime.
“There are women here who have been asking after their relatives since 5:30am,” an anguished woman, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
She herself rushed to the prison after receiving a call from people who live nearby and told her “they heard the shooting, they heard the screams.”
When she arrived, she said, soldiers told her to go to the morgue to check if her loved one was dead or alive.
Police and military officers stand guard in front of a prison in Esmeraldas, Ecuador on September 25, 2025. / Credit: ANTONY QUINTERO/AFP via Getty Images
On Monday, 13 prisoners and a guard were reported killed in southwest Ecuador, whose overcrowded and violent prisons have become operational centers for organized crime groups. Officials said the dead inmates belonged to the rival Los Choneros and Los Lobos gangs, two of the biggest drug trafficking groups in Ecuador. Earlier this month, the U.S. designated both gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
Nestled between the globe’s top two cocaine exporters — Colombia and Peru — the country of some 17 million people has seen violence spiral in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
More than 70% of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data.
Since February 2021, gang wars have largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where inmates have often been killed in gruesome fashion — their bodies dismembered and burnt.
Prison parties, live broadcasts
Ecuador’s prisons are among the most dangerous in the world. The penitentiaries have been under military control since January 2024, when President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict” after a brutal wave of gang violence.
Prison officials have also been targeted. Last September, the director of Ecuador’s biggest prison, Maria Daniela Icaza, was killed in an armed attack while driving. Her death came just days after the head of a different prison, Alex Guevara, was killed, also in an attack while traveling by car.
Ecuador’s biggest prison massacre happened in 2021, when more than 100 inmates were killed in the port city of Guayaquil in the southwest.
Inmates have on more than one occasion gone live on social media to broadcast their violent campaigns, showing off the decapitated and charred bodies of their enemies.
Last year, gang members took scores of prison guards hostage after the jailbreak of narco boss Jose Adolfo Macias, aka “Fito,” while allies on the outside detonated bombs and held a television presenter at gunpoint live on air.
Fito, the boss of the Los Choneros gang, was recaptured in June this year, more than a year after his escape.
He had been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for involvement in organized crime, drug trafficking and murder, but continued pulling the strings of the criminal underworld from behind bars.
Videos emerged of Fito holding wild parties before he escaped from prison, some with fireworks, illustrating the lawlessness of such facilities.
In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Fito to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty to charges, including international cocaine distribution and smuggling firearms.
Clashes between drug gangs on Thursday claimed at least 17 lives in the second deadly riot in an Ecuadoran prison in days, with rampaging inmates beheading and maiming rivals, officials in the violence-wracked country said.
Bloody fighting broke out in a prison in the troubled coastal city of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border, where police said they found 10 dead prisoners in two cell blocks — adding to about 500 inmates massacred in the country since 2021.
Images shared on social media and verified by Agence France-Presse showed dead men sprawled on the ground with bare, blood-stained torsos, at least two of them decapitated.
Dozens of worried family members gathered outside the prison for news of their loved ones Thursday as the SNAI prison authority raised the official toll from 10 in the morning to 17 by lunchtime.
“There are women here who have been asking after their relatives since 5:30am,” an anguished woman, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
She herself rushed to the prison after receiving a call from people who live nearby and told her “they heard the shooting, they heard the screams.”
When she arrived, she said, soldiers told her to go to the morgue to check if her loved one was dead or alive.
Police and military officers stand guard in front of a prison in Esmeraldas, Ecuador on September 25, 2025.
ANTONY QUINTERO/AFP via Getty Images
On Monday, 13 prisoners and a guard were reported killed in southwest Ecuador, whose overcrowded and violent prisons have become operational centers for organized crime groups. Officials said the dead inmates belonged to the rival Los Choneros and Los Lobos gangs, two of the biggest drug trafficking groups in Ecuador. Earlier this month, the U.S. designated both gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
Nestled between the globe’s top two cocaine exporters — Colombia and Peru — the country of some 17 million people has seen violence spiral in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
More than 70% of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data.
Since February 2021, gang wars have largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where inmates have often been killed in gruesome fashion — their bodies dismembered and burnt.
Prison parties, live broadcasts
Ecuador’s prisons are among the most dangerous in the world. The penitentiaries have been under military control since January 2024, when President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict” after a brutal wave of gang violence.
Prison officials have also been targeted. Last September, the director of Ecuador’s biggest prison, Maria Daniela Icaza, was killed in an armed attack while driving. Her death came just days after the head of a different prison, Alex Guevara, was killed, also in an attack while traveling by car.
Ecuador’s biggest prison massacre happened in 2021, when more than 100 inmates were killed in the port city of Guayaquil in the southwest.
Inmates have on more than one occasion gone live on social media to broadcast their violent campaigns, showing off the decapitated and charred bodies of their enemies.
Last year, gang members took scores of prison guards hostage after the jailbreak of narco boss Jose Adolfo Macias, aka “Fito,” while allies on the outside detonated bombs and held a television presenter at gunpoint live on air.
Fito, the boss of the Los Choneros gang, was recaptured in June this year, more than a year after his escape.
He had been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for involvement in organized crime, drug trafficking and murder, but continued pulling the strings of the criminal underworld from behind bars.
Videos emerged of Fito holding wild parties before he escaped from prison, some with fireworks, illustrating the lawlessness of such facilities.
In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Fito to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty to charges, including international cocaine distribution and smuggling firearms.
Scientists have discovered prehistoric insects preserved in amber for the first time in South America, providing a fresh glimpse into life on Earth at a time when flowering plants were just beginning to diversify and spread around the world.
Many of the specimens found at a sandstone quarry in Ecuador date to 112 million years ago, said Fabiany Herrera, curator of fossil plants at the Field Museum in Chicago and co-author of the study published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment. At least six types of arthropods were found preserved, according to the study.
Almost all known amber deposits from the past 130 million years have been in the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s long been “an enigma” that scientists have found few in southern regions that once comprised the supercontinent Gondwana, said David Grimaldi, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History who was not involved in thediscovery.
This photo provided by researchers in September 2025 shows a Diptera Brachycera fly of the family Dolichopodidae (long-legged flies) trapped in a Cretaceous-era amber sample discovered in Ecuador.
Mónica Solórzano-Kraemer/AP
This marks the first time researchers have identified ancient beetles, flies, ants and wasps in fossilized tree resin in South America, said Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, a paleoentomologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, who also was not involved in the new study.
“Amber pieces are little windows into the past,” Pérez-de la Fuente said, adding that the discovery will help researchers understand the evolving interactions between flowering plants and insects that lived during the era of the dinosaurs.
The researchers uncovered hundreds of fragments of amber, some containing ancient insects, pollen and tree leaves, at a sandstone quarry in Ecuador that’s on the edge of what is today the Amazon basin.
Two types of amber were discovered, according to the study: There was a more common form of amber found around the roots of resin-producing plants, and a rarer form of the material formed from resin exposed to air. The amber formed around the roots did not hold any specimens, the study said.
This photo provided by researchers in September 2025 shows a Diptera Nematocera fly of the family Chironomidae (non-biting midges) trapped in a Cretaceous-era amber sample discovered in Ecuador.
Mónica Solórzano-Kraemer/AP
“A different kind of forest”
The discoveries provide evidence that the area was once a “humid, resinous forest ecosystem,” according to the study.
But today’s rainforest is much different from what dinosaurs roamed through, Herrera said. Based on an analysis of fossils in the amber, the ancient rainforest contained species of ferns and conifers, including the unusual Monkey Puzzle Tree, that no longer grow in Amazonia.
“It was a different kind of forest,” said Herrera.
The amber deposits were previously known to geologists and miners who worked at the Genoveva quarry. Study co-author Carlos Jaramillo at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute first heard of them about a decade ago and set out to find the exact location, aided by geology field notes.
This photo provided by researchers in September 2025 shows a Diptera Nematocera fly of the family Chironomidae (non-biting midges) trapped in a Cretaceous-era amber sample discovered in Ecuador.
Mónica Solórzano-Kraemer/AP
“I went there and realized this place is amazing,” Jaramillo said. “There’s so much amber in the mines,” and it’s more visible in the open quarry than it would be if hidden under dense layers of vegetation.
Researchers will continue to analyze the amber trove to learn more about Cretaceous-era biodiversity — including the insects that contributed to evolution by feeding on flowering plants. “Amber tends to preserve things that are tiny,” said Grimaldi.
“It’s the time when the relationship between flowering plants and insects got started,” said Pérez-de la Fuente. “And that turned out to be one of the most successful partnerships in nature.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the United States is designating two Ecuadorian gangs as foreign terrorist organizations in the Trump administration’s latest move against cartels.
The announcement came as Rubio traveled to Ecuador to meet with its leaders in a trip to Latin America this week that has been overshadowed by a U.S. military strike against a similarly designated gang, Tren de Aragua. The strike has raised concerns in the region about whether the Trump administration will step up military activity to combat drug trafficking and illegal migration.
The two new designees, Los Lobos and Los Choneros, are Ecuadorian gangs blamed for much of the violence that began since the COVID-19 pandemic. The designation, Rubio said, brings “all sorts of options” for the U.S. government to work in conjunction with the government of Ecuador to crack down on these groups.
That includes the ability to kill them as well as take action against the properties and banking accounts in the U.S. for the group’s members and people with ties to the criminal organizations, Rubio said, adding it would also help with intelligence sharing.
Rubio called them “vicious animals, these terrorists.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a joint news conference with Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld at the Palacio de Carondelet, in Quito, Ecuador, Sept. 4, 2025.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Criminal gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country’s biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías, who leads Los Choneros, after his escape from a maximum-security prison in 2024. In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macias to the United States, where he faces multiple drug trafficking and firearms charges.
Last year, the U.S. classified Los Choneros as one of the most violent gangs and affirmed its connection to powerful Mexican drug cartels who threaten Ecuador and the surrounding region.
Earlier this year, a leader of Los Lobos was arrested at his home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. Carlos D, widely known by his alias El Chino, was the second-in-command of Los Lobos and “considered a high-value target,” the armed forces said in a statement.
The U.S. last year declared Los Lobos to be the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador.
“Interdiction doesn’t work”
Rubio’s meetings in Quito on Thursday follow talks a day earlier with Mexican leaders that were overshadowed by the U.S. military strike on suspected Tren de Aragua drug runners in the southern Caribbean.
The Trump administration asserts that it targeted a Venezuelan drug-running ship crewed by members of Tren de Aragua. U.S. officials say the vessel’s cargo was intended for the United States and that the strike killed 11 people.
Rubio defended the action and offered no justification other than to say the boat posed an “immediate threat” to the U.S. and that Trump opted to “blow it up” rather than follow what had been standard procedure to stop and board, arrest the crew and seize any contraband on board.
“Interdiction doesn’t work,” Rubio said Wednesday. “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up. And it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now, I don’t know, but the point is the president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that U.S. military assets will remain in the region, and that more strikes may be forthcoming.
“This is a deadly, serious mission for us and it won’t stop with just this strike,” Hegseth told Fox News. “Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco-terrorist will face the same fate.”
The strike got a mixed reaction from leaders around Latin America, where the U.S. history of military intervention and gunboat diplomacy is still fresh. Many, like officials in Mexico, were careful not to outright condemn the attack but stressed the importance of protecting national sovereignty and warning that expanded U.S. military involvement might actually backfire.
Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Ramón de la Fuente, speaking to reporters alongside Rubio, emphasized his country’s preference for “nonintervention, peaceful solution of conflicts.”
Ecuador has its own issues with narcotics trafficking and also has been looked to by the Trump administration as a possible destination to deport non-Ecuadorian migrants from the United States. U.S. officials have said they would like to secure an agreement with Ecuador that would have it accept such deportees, but the status of negotiations with Quito was not clear.
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, on Thursday thanked Rubio for the U.S. efforts to “actually eliminate any terrorist threat.” Before their meeting, Rubio had said on social media that the U.S. and Ecuador are “aligned as key partners on ending illegal immigration and combatting transnational crime and terrorism.”
Surging violence since COVID-19 pandemic
The latest U.N. World Drug Report says various countries in South America, including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, reported larger cocaine seizures in 2022 than in 2021, but it does not give Venezuela the outsize role that the White House has in recent months.
“The impact of increased cocaine trafficking has been felt in Ecuador in particular, which has seen a wave of lethal violence in recent years linked to both local and transnational crime groups, most notably from Mexico and the Balkan countries,” the report says.
Violence has skyrocketed in Ecuador since the COVID-19 pandemic, as drug traffickers expanded operations in the country and took advantage of the nation’s banana industry.
The South American country is the world’s largest exporter of bananas, shipping about 7.2 million tons a year by sea. Traffickers find containers filled with bananas the perfect vehicle to smuggle their product.
In addition, cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans have settled in Ecuador because it uses the U.S. dollar and has weak laws and institutions, along with a network of long-established, ruthless gangs that are eager for work.
Ecuador also gained prominence in the global cocaine trade after political changes in Colombia last decade. Coca bush fields in Colombia have been moving closer to the border with Ecuador due to the breakup of criminal groups after the 2016 demobilization of the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym FARC.
Rubio is also visiting the Andean country to argue against its close ties and reliance on China.
