Andean Group - October 2026

Questioned on 9 September about whether the expanding US security partnership with Ecuador poses human rights concerns, amid concerns that fishing vessels may have been targeted in air strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that criminal organisations were “the real human rights violator”. His comments came in the wake of a Washington Post report which stated that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was conducting secretive counternarcotics operations in the Pacific with the support of the governments of Ecuador and El Salvador.

Scrutiny has been intensifying on the US-Ecuador security relationship since 13 August, when The Washington Post reported that the CIA was carrying out a covert counternarcotics mission within Ecuadorean waters. This has reportedly included the bombing of fishing boats suspected of involvement in drug trafficking, and the transportation of detained crew members to El Salvador, from where a suspected CIA aircraft has been carrying out surveillance missions.

According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s covert action programme, in which the US role is not officially acknowledged, “adds a new and secretive dimension to the… otherwise highly publicized campaign against alleged drug traffickers at sea”. Indeed, whereas the US Defence Department has been quick to boast of strikes on suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Pacific, the news of strikes in Ecuadorean waters initially trickled out via media reports. A source cited by the Post said that the covert operations are separate to the wider campaign of air strikes that is being led by the Pentagon.

The article highlights the case of three fishing vessels which were allegedly targeted within Ecuador’s exclusive economic zone around the Galápagos Islands. One of these, the Fiorella, reportedly vanished on 20 January with eight crew members aboard. Fishermen from other vessels reported seeing a plume of smoke and said they found debris in the water. A further two vessels, the Don Maca and the Negra Francisca Duarte II, reportedly came under attack from quadcopter drones in March, in the same area. The Post cites crew members, who all survived, as saying that their vessels were boarded and that they were hooded, taken aboard another ship, and transported to El Salvador. They were then reportedly returned to Ecuador without any explanation.

El Salvador’s involvement adds a further level of intrigue. According to the Post, in each incident, a “high-end business jet equipped with specialized surveillance technology flew from El Salvador in the direction of the fishing vessels on the days of the strikes and in the days prior”. The report adds that “details about the plane, and the pattern of its flights before the incidents, suggest that it may be linked to the secret CIA program.” The US military has a cooperative security location (CSL), Comalapa, at the international airport in San Salvador, where the harsh security policies of President Nayib Bukele’s government have made him one of Washington’s key allies in the hemisphere.

Despite the Post’s report that the CIA operations are covert in nature, there are clear signs of a developing three-way security partnership between the US, Ecuador, and El Salvador. On 30 July the US Joint Interagency Task Force South detailed an operation in which the US detected a high-speed vessel travelling 226 nautical miles off the Ecuadorean coast, heading towards Mexico, and coordinated a pursuit of the vessel by the Ecuadorean navy and the Salvadorean armed forces, which together executed a pincer movement to capture it. The operation resulted in the arrest of two Ecuadorean crewmembers and the seizure of 1.36 tonnes of cocaine.

US defends security alliances

The US campaign against suspected Ecuadorean drug trafficking boats has not been without controversy. On 7 September a grouping of 15 local human rights groups called for an immediate end to these operations, claiming that they entail “illegal deprivation of liberty, temporary forced disappearance, torture, and destruction of Ecuadorean fishing vessels.” On the same day, the US Southern Command (Southcom) continued its campaign by destroying a vessel off the Ecuadorean coast that it claimed was smuggling drugs for Los Choneros, one of Ecuador’s three main gangs. Southcom said that the crew was captured and removed from the vessel before it was destroyed. Similar operations were announced on 9, 16, and 17 September. Another strike, on 10 September, was carried out while the crew was still on board, killing three people.

Responding to a question on 9 September about whether the US government was concerned about being tainted by human rights abuses allegedly committed via its alliances with Ecuador and El Salvador, and with President Delcy Rodríguez’s government in Venezuela, Rubio issued a staunch defence of Washington’s approach to tackling regional security threats. “The real human rights violations happening in this part of the world is on behalf of narcoterrorists,” he said, adding: “We’re going to choose [to be] on the side of leaders that are going to be serious about taking these groups on and eliminating them once and for all. Otherwise, those groups – those terrorist groups – will eat these countries up.”

Also on 9 September Rubio met Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa in Quito and said that President Donald Trump’s administration would seek to provide an additional US$45m for bilateral security efforts. In a sign that this cooperation has plenty of room to develop further, Rubio said that “the progress we’ve made on this relationship really has no historic precedent, and there’s so much more to do.”

Los Tiguerones terrorist designation

On 9 September US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Los Tiguerones, a powerful Ecuadorean gang, has been designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organisation (FTO) and a specially designated global terrorist. He said that the gang is “linked to narcotrafficking and other illicit activity, along with numerous attacks targeting civilians, law enforcement officers, and journalists, including the live takeover of an Ecuadorian television station in 2024.” Ecuador’s two other main gangs, Los Lobos and Los Choneros, received the same terrorist designations in September 2025.