According to preliminary FBI data, violent crime fell nearly 10 percent in 2025 compared to 2024 – one of the most dramatic declines on record. While domestic law enforcement officers undoubtedly deserve immense credit for their heroic efforts to make America safer, credit also goes to President Donald Trump’s strategic decision to target the foreign sources of drug trafficking.
While exact statistics are difficult to measure, at least one quarter of all arrests in the United States are related to drug offenses. One study found that an astonishing 70 percent of all male prison inmates abuse drugs, compared to just 11.2 percent of the general population.
Even if an individual is charged with a non-drug-related offense, it is likely that illicit drugs contributed in some way to his arrest. Dr. Johann Walther, a former Swiss government advisor on health and pathologies, told me in an interview that “most crimes involve illegal narcotics.” He emphasized that “addressing this issue will have a positive impact on overall lawfulness in society.”
Accordingly, the Trump administration has prioritized stopping the flow of drugs into the country – particularly fentanyl, which killed nearly 50,000 Americans in 2024 and more than 75,000 in 2023. That mission started with securing the border but has now expanded to targeting narcotics traffickers abroad as well.
One of the most significant enforcement operations came last week, with President Trump confirming that U.S. forces had eliminated Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, better known as Nino Guerrero, in a “swift and lethal” kinetic strike in Venezuela. Guerrero was a major player in the infamous Tren de Aragua gang.
As U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton explained, the gang is responsible for horrific acts of violence and drug trafficking throughout North America, including into the United States. NPR noted that the Trump administration has “taken a series of extraordinary actions against the gang, including a series of strikes on small boats his administration has accused of smuggling drugs to America.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also highlighted the involvement of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC), also known as the “Shield of the Americas,” in the operation. ACCC is a multinational military and political coalition which President Trump established in March for this exact purpose.
Dr. Deodat Haentjens, a former advisor to the President of Interpol on counternarcotics policy, said that the strike demonstrated to criminal organizations that the United States is willing to “act beyond previous expectations.” He added that American strikes on drug traffickers under Trump “send a clear message that narcotics barons did not anticipate.”
Professor Markus Allenbach, a former advisor to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, told me that criminologists should view Trump’s decisive action as “a paradigm shift in fighting crime.” Allenbach also noted that Trump has directly confronted Chinese President Xi Jinping over Beijing’s failure to stop the production and smuggling of fentanyl precursors – something that he called a “genuine quality change” that has not been seen in decades.
While most of the illicit fentanyl in the United States comes from Mexico, about 97 percent of the chemicals used to make the deadly drug come from Chinese companies. As AMAC Newsline reported last month, China finally began cracking down on the distributors of fentanyl precursors following Trump’s visit to China earlier this year. Whereas before Beijing has largely failed to follow through on its enforcement promises, the Chinese government is now releasing specific reports about seizures of illegal precursor chemicals.
An anonymous high-ranking CCP defector familiar with the Party’s drug activities against the West explained that “before President Trump and the FBI’s new strategy, criminal groups believed themselves untouchable due to state protection and lucrative trade interests” – a tactic deployed by the CCP since the 1950s. But now, “their operations are being systematically dismantled,” marking “a clear triumph for the U.S. and the West.”
Another major law enforcement investigation in Japan has exposed an organization going by the name of Hubei Amarvel Biotech for orchestrating a vast fentanyl smuggling network that stretched to Australia, Russia, and India as well as the United States and Mexico. The criminal enterprise used Japanese ports that received little scrutiny as a “command hub” to manage shipments of precursors from China. The company’s executives have already been convicted in the United States.
It is no coincidence that this crackdown on foreign drug trafficking and smuggling has coincided with a dramatic decline in violent crime in the United States. Overall, the preliminary FBI data shows that murder and non-negligent manslaughter are down 18.1 percent, rape is down 7.6 percent, robbery is down 18.5 percent, and aggravated assault is down 7.2 percent. Property crime also decreased by 12.4 percent from 2024 to 2025, according to the data.
Many of Trump’s sharpest critics frequently talk about the “root causes” of crime, citing things like poverty, racism, and wealth inequality. But Trump is eliminating one of the biggest actual root causes of crime – and unlike liberal overtures to “restorative justice,” his policies are delivering real results.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
Finally someone gets that the way to fight crime is to actually Fight Crime! Give Dick Tracy his Tommygun back and lets do this!
Meanwhile the Democrat strategy is to make crime is like crime legal, let people arrested out immediately with no bill, and prosecuted innocent Americans. Don’t forget defending drug cartels
Deport Africans Americans who commit crime . They are 13 percent of our population and commit over 60% of the Crime in our Country .
Users have to get their drug money SOMEWHERE and most of them are not independently wealthy! So they must rob or burglarize to feed their habit!
There are facts, numbers and evidence enough which left does not want to see and will quickly hide behind charges of white supremacy and racism, that record is so worn out it only scratches on everyone nerves, they will not tire of it, the only argument they have, how much longer can they play this game and how much longer will voter buy it, judging by NYC mayor, voter is hopeless. Thank God for President’s common sense, for not playing the game according to the rules of those who know the best and so far have a record to prove it.
GREAT article Ben. More articles with solid documentation about the fruitful programs that are going on in the Trump years need to be posted as there is not enough good media information being put out to the public. You’re one of the best. Something you may want to look into is the number of persons living in government assisted housing that are involved in drugs and other crimes. I think you and the general public would be surprised. Much needs to be done regarding the current fair housing regulations and programs.
It’s not the population that are the criminals the woke progressives from Biden on down is the problem with drug, crimes, rape and murder. And not to forget DEI crimes committed in the name of DEI. They want to create equality with equity so go out you poor people and rob up to 999 dollars and we won’t do anything to you. What happened store owners put every item behind lock and key including toothpaste, sinus drugs, pain killers, eye drops. So the stores could charge twice as much for these drugs because of the locked cabinets. No Autopen Biden let this country go to pot, literally and figuratively. And once again President Trump is cleaning it up and fixing it. Only the damage has been done and many stores in our inner cities have left. Closed down. Losing jobs and an economy that is destroying our inner cities and the population with it. This is what’s wrong with these woke progressives. They are okay with all of this because they hate America and wants her to fail.
And this is an example of why I support President Trump; he gets things done. We American citizens have quite enough home grown issues. We do not need foreign influencers adding to our issues.
drugs feed cartels,millionares and protected politicians along with the dem.regime. it KILLS users so they have keep recruiting new users. sad
It has long been known that the CCP benefits directly, financially from providing materials utilized to create and distribute lethal drugs. What is factual and credibly known should be publicized to the American people repeatedly and encourage them to keep abreast of developments. Perhaps even encouraging purchasing habits to switch back to Made in America products.
Very informative and encouraging article.Keep up the great work Ben!
Stop ALL drugs into the US illegal
Any president could have accomplished this, but it took Trump to actually make it happen. The rest were far more concerned with making their pro-elicit drug constituents unhappy.
I would like to adjust the speed of the reading.
That’s the biggest joke yet. There is no crime reduction. It takes 15-20 minutes of the local news to talk about all the shootings, robberies, stabbings, carjackings, and other crimes every day. These are not repeat stories, they are new crimes in the last 24 hours. It used to take 10-15 minutes. No reduction in sight. Someone at the FBI is faking numbers.