Cartel Lieutenant Falls, But the Drug War Rages On

Fabian Edilson Torres Caranton, a 53-year-old Colombian national, stood before a U.S. court this week and admitted his role in flooding our streets with cocaine. As a lieutenant in the Clan del Golfo, one of Colombia’s most ruthless drug cartels, Torres coordinated the production and shipment of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, destined for Houston via Mexican buyers. His guilty plea to conspiracy charges carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison, with the possibility of life behind bars. To the Justice Department, this is a triumph, a notch in the belt of Operation Take Back America, their shiny new initiative to crush cartels and secure our borders.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Torres is no kingpin. He’s a cog in a machine far bigger than any one man, a machine fueled by decades of failed policy and an insatiable American appetite for drugs. The real story here isn’t his confession or the 363 kilograms of cocaine seized in 2018. It’s the glaring truth that locking him up for a decade, or even a lifetime, won’t dismantle the Clan del Golfo or stop the next shipment from hitting our shores. We’ve been down this road before, and it’s a dead end.

Operation Take Back America, launched just last month, promises to ‘repel the invasion’ of drugs and crime with all the bravado of a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet beneath the tough talk lies a familiar playbook: more arrests, harsher sentences, and a border-first obsession that ignores the root causes driving this crisis. Torres’s case is a perfect example—extradited from Colombia after years of joint U.S.-Colombian efforts, he’s now a trophy for a system that celebrates punishment over progress. Meanwhile, the cartels keep churning, and our communities keep suffering.

The numbers tell a brutal story. In 2024, synthetic opioids linked to transnational criminal organizations claimed over 52,000 American lives. That’s not just a statistic; it’s a generation lost to addiction, families torn apart, and futures erased. The Clan del Golfo, with its narco-submarines and corrupted port workers, thrives on this chaos, raking in billions while rural Colombian farmers toil in poverty, growing coca because it’s the only way to survive. Torres monitored labs in places like Coralito, but he didn’t create the conditions that made those labs profitable.

History backs this up. Back in the 1980s, the Medellín Cartel flooded the U.S. with cocaine, and we responded with the War on Drugs—mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, and a militarized approach that turned neighborhoods into battlegrounds. Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993 didn’t end the trade; it just handed the reins to the Cali Cartel, then to groups like the Clan del Golfo. Today, despite decades of busts and billions spent, cocaine flows through Panama’s ports at record levels—117 tons seized last year alone. The cartels adapt. We don’t.

Operation Take Back America boasts early wins: 960 immigration-related charges in a week, a 71% drop in border apprehensions since January. Impressive, sure, but these metrics dodge the real issue. Arresting traffickers like Torres or deporting low-level mules doesn’t touch the demand fueling this nightmare. And designating cartels as terrorist organizations, as we did in February, only escalates the rhetoric without addressing why people turn to drugs—or why Colombians grow coca instead of coffee.

Advocates for tougher enforcement argue it’s about protecting our communities from violent crime. They’re not wrong to want safety. But the evidence disagrees with their solution. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 piled on penalties that packed prisons with small-time dealers, not masterminds. Studies show mandatory minimums rarely deter high-level traffickers; they just clog the system with people like Torres, while the real players stay untouchable. It’s a feel-good fix that leaves us less safe.

Contrast that with Colombia’s push for crop substitution and rural development, backed by U.S. partners like the DEA. In March, General Carlos Fernando Triana met with American officials to double down on these efforts—replacing coca with sustainable crops, giving farmers a lifeline. It’s slow, imperfect work, but it strikes at the heart of the problem in a way handcuffs never will. Why aren’t we investing more there instead of staging another border showdown?

Torres faces sentencing in August, and the judge will weigh the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines—guidelines that, until recently, locked people away with little regard for context. Thankfully, the Sentencing Commission’s January 2025 proposals offer a glimmer of hope, pushing for shorter sentences, more judicial discretion, and a focus on rehabilitation over retribution. If applied retroactively, these changes could free thousands caught in the War on Drugs’ crossfire. That’s the kind of bold shift we need, not another decade of Torres clones cycling through cells.

Operation Take Back America could be a chance to rethink our approach, to prioritize treatment and prevention over punishment. Instead, it doubles down on a border-centric fantasy that ignores the global nature of this fight. Cartels don’t care about walls; they’ve got submarines and cloned shipping seals. We need intelligence, not just muscle—more cooperation with Colombia on alternative development, more funding for addiction recovery here at home. The DOJ’s own data shows overdose deaths spiking, yet resources stay tied up in prosecutions that change nothing.

The counterargument from law-and-order champions is predictable: leniency emboldens criminals. They’ll point to Torres’s 363 kilograms and say we can’t afford to go soft. But softness isn’t the goal—smartness is. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 proved we can ease penalties without unleashing chaos; it cut crack cocaine disparities and didn’t spike crime. We’ve got the tools to do better. Why cling to a strategy that’s failed since Reagan?

Torres’s guilty plea isn’t a victory; it’s a symptom. A symptom of a system that’s spent 40 years chasing its tail, locking up lieutenants while the bosses cash out, and leaving our communities to pick up the pieces. Operation Take Back America sounds noble—who doesn’t want to protect our neighborhoods? But its obsession with punishment over prevention is a relic of a bygone era, one that’s cost us too much already.

We can’t arrest our way out of this. Real security comes from breaking the cycle—supporting Colombian farmers so they don’t need cartels, treating addiction so users don’t fuel demand, and reforming sentencing so we’re not warehousing people for life over a broken status quo. Torres will serve his time, but the fight’s bigger than him. It’s time we stop punishing and start healing.