Brazil would join the United States-led coalition fighting drug cartels if presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro wins the country’s October 25 runoff election, according to his brother, Brazilian politician Eduardo Bolsonaro, who told Fox News Digital about the plan in an exclusive interview.
The coalition, called the Shield of the Americas, is built to expand security cooperation across the Western Hemisphere through intelligence sharing, military coordination and joint action against cartel financing networks.
“The main thing that we need to do is fight the cartels,” Eduardo Bolsonaro said. “They work together in a lot of countries, so we should fight back then.”
Brazil has stayed out of the initiative under current left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Eduardo Bolsonaro said that would change if his brother’s conservative Liberal Party takes the presidency.
“So I’m sure that, under the leadership of President Trump and the Shield of the Americas, we have the opportunity for the first time” to work together against the cartels, Eduardo Bolsonaro said.
Flávio Bolsonaro led Lula in the first round of voting and faces him head-to-head in the October 25 runoff. He has said he would pursue closer security ties with Washington and with other conservative governments in the region.
Already Eight Groups Designated Terrorists
The push to bring Brazil into the fold follows the Trump administration’s February 2025 decision to designate eight major criminal organizations as both Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Those groups are Tren de Aragua, MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, La Nueva Familia Michoacana and Carteles Unidos.
If Brazil signs on, it would bring the coalition’s reach deeper into South America, a region where criminal organizations like Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho have grown into major players in the drug trade.
Argentina, El Salvador and Peru already participate in the U.S.-led effort, and the State Department says Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay and Chile have also taken part.
The coalition’s stated goals include disrupting drug trafficking, choking off cartel financing, and tightening cooperation among law enforcement and military officials across participating nations.
U.S. officials have repeatedly tied cartel operations to the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the United States. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has attributed hundreds of thousands of American deaths to cartel-linked drug overdoses.
