Brazil and US Launch Joint Operations on Organized Crime

The same two governments that spent months feuding over tariffs, terrorism labels, and the imprisonment of a former president have quietly agreed to share intelligence and conduct joint operations against the criminal networks that connect them.

Brazil and the United States will launch joint operations targeting transnational organized crime, with a focus on intercepting illicit arms and narcotics shipments, according to La República Colombia, citing the initiative as part of a broader agenda between Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Donald Trump. The operation will integrate intelligence-sharing and coordinated enforcement between Brazilian and American agencies—a significant step for two countries whose security relationship has been complicated by deep political disagreements over how to classify and combat the region’s most powerful criminal organizations.

From Phone Call to Operations

The initiative traces back to a 40-minute phone call between Lula and Trump in December 2025. During that conversation, Lula proposed cooperation on arresting Brazilian crime leaders living in Miami and emphasized that the two countries needed “intelligence and smart tactics” rather than military force to combat trafficking. Trump reportedly promised “full support for joint initiatives targeting criminal organizations,” and the call was described by both sides as “very productive.” The joint action announced Friday moves that rhetoric into operational reality.

The framework is notable for what it is not: it is not a terror designation, not a status-of-forces agreement, and not an expansion of the US naval strikes that have killed over 150 people in the Caribbean since Operation Southern Spear began in September 2025. Instead, it appears to follow the intelligence-first model that Lula has advocated—police-to-police and agency-to-agency cooperation within existing legal frameworks, rather than the military-legal architecture that Washington has built around its terror designations.

The Terror Label Still Looms

The joint action does not resolve the central tension in the bilateral relationship: Washington’s push to designate the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The US re-ignited that pressure on March 6, and Lula has consistently rejected the classification, arguing that organized crime should be treated as a domestic public security matter. The Lula government fears that a terror designation could create legal pretexts for extraterritorial operations—a concern sharpened by the US capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January under a narcoterrorism framework.

The joint crime initiative may represent Lula’s attempt to offer Washington a cooperative alternative that demonstrates results without conceding on the terror label. Brazil signed its own anti-faction law in March 2026, which strengthened penalties for criminal organizations and expanded asset seizure powers, giving domestic prosecutors more tools without importing the US terrorism framework.

Election-Year Calculations

With Brazil’s presidential election six months away, the security cooperation announcement serves multiple political functions. For Lula, it blunts the opposition narrative that his government is soft on crime—a vulnerability that polling consistently identifies as his weakest flank. For Trump, it demonstrates that his administration can extract security cooperation from a left-wing government that has resisted his harder-line approaches. The practical test will be whether the initiative produces visible results—arrests, seizures, dismantled networks—before October’s vote. Brazil’s criminal syndicates operate in at least 12 US states, and the arms pipeline that feeds PCC and CV violence runs through Paraguay, Bolivia, and the triple border region. Intercepting that pipeline requires exactly the kind of cross-border intelligence-sharing that the new initiative promises. Whether it delivers remains to be seen.

Related Coverage: Brazil Scrambles to Block U.S. Terror Label for Its Gangs • Latin America Terrorist Designation Tracker • Brazilian Crime Syndicates Link With Islamist Terror Groups