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Miller at the Americas Counter Cartel Conference: The Cartels Are 'the ISIS and Al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere,' Mar. 5, 2026

March 5, 2026 · Right Side Broadcasting Network · 0:07:47

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What happened

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller addressed the Americas Counter Cartel Conference on March 5, 2026, thanking Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and describing what he called a paradigm shift in the Western Hemisphere under President Trump. “We are not going to cede an inch of territory in this hemisphere to our enemies or our adversaries,” Miller said, arguing that no nation in the hemisphere should tolerate territory controlled by any entity other than its sovereign government.

“The cartels that operate in this hemisphere are the ISIS and the Al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere,” he said, “and should be treated just as brutally and just as ruthlessly as we treat those organizations.” Miller argued there is no purely criminal-justice solution to the cartel problem — the reason, he said, the conference gathered military rather than legal leadership — and described illegal immigration facilitated by criminal networks as itself a form of terrorism that drains partner nations of their people while enriching the cartels. He closed by framing the human rights at stake as those of peaceable citizens with “an absolute human right to live in physical safety and security.”

Why it matters

This is Miller’s fullest set-piece statement of the administration’s hemispheric security doctrine: cartel control of territory treated as a military problem, partner governments pressed to reclaim it, and migration flows traced back to the insecurity the cartels create — the framework behind the administration’s cartel terrorist designations.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Miller’s conference commitment that the United States will use hard power to keep any hemisphere territory from cartel or adversary control, as stated on March 5, 2026 — flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: Right Side Broadcasting Network, “Stephen Miller Speaks at Americas Counter Cartel Conference,” March 5, 2026 (video tiyvOhCsZYU); transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, never republished verbatim). Alternate carries of the same address recorded in the index: DWS News (6cK15YS6U_Q), Forbes Breaking News (Y6WNesgOI6s) and DRM News (-aCgRPpNAEA).