Colombian authorities have made their largest cocaine bust in a decade, confiscating 14 tonnes at its main Pacific port, as President Gustavo Petro continues to fight back against claims from the administration of United States President Donald Trump of his complicity in the drug trade.
The seizure in the world’s largest cocaine-producing country came as Bolivia announced the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will be invited back into the country, 17 years after being expelled, to bolster the new conservative government’s anti-cocaine efforts.
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Colombia’s Ministry of Defence hailed the “historic blow” to drug traffickers on Friday, as it announced it had seized dozens of 50-kilogramme (110-pound) sacks of cocaine inside a warehouse in the southwestern port of Buenaventura, a strategic departure point for Colombian cocaine.
“The drug was camouflaged under the method of being mixed with plaster,” it said, adding that the container was headed for the Netherlands.
“With this seizure, we prevented the circulation of 35 million doses of cocaine and impacted the finances of those structures by more than $388.9m.”
Petro confirmed the seizure in a post on X, calling it the largest by the Colombian police “in the last decade” as he posted a video of officers and canines raiding the warehouse in the Port of Buenaventura.
He added that the operation was carried out “without a single death”.
¡ALERTA!
La incautación más grande de la Policía de Colombia en la última década.
Son 14 toneladas de cocaína incautadas sin un solo muerto en el Puerto de Buenaventura. pic.twitter.com/KlCPPfRbWa
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) November 21, 2025
Translation: ALERT! The largest seizure by the Colombian Police in the last decade. It is 14 tonnes of cocaine seized without a single death in the Port of Buenaventura.
Pressure from Washington
The seizure comes as the Trump administration has ramped up pressure on Bogota over recent months, branding its anti-drug policies insufficient and threatening to remove Colombia from its list of allies in its war on drugs.
In October, the US Department of the Treasury sanctioned President Petro, his wife Veronica del Socorro Alcocer Garcia, his son Nicolas Fernando Petro Burgos, and Colombian Interior Minister Armando Alberto Benedetti over their alleged involvement in the global drug trade.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Petro had “allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity”.
“Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans,” Bessent said.
On Monday, Petro ordered Colombia’s Financial Information and Analysis Unit to publicly release his bank records in an effort to demonstrate he has no ties to drug trafficking.
“Don’t you find it alarming that my bank accounts and transactions contradict President Trump’s assessment of a president democratically elected by Colombians?” Petro wrote on X.
Petro has been critical of Trump’s anti-drug strategy since returning to office, condemning his administration’s repeated bombing of suspected trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean since September as “extrajudicial executions”.
The Trump administration has cast its military actions – including a recent dramatic increase of warships stationed in the region – as an effort to counter illicit drug flows.
Venezuela has decried it as a pretext to force President Nicolas Maduro from power, as fears grow in Caracas that Trump is readying troops for imminent military action against the South American country.
Bolivia’s conservative shift
As Colombia and Venezuela look to be on a collision course with Washington, US ties with Bolivia are showing signs of improvement as the South American country begins a new era of conservative governance after two decades of leftist rule.
Bolivia’s brand-new narcotics tsar, Ernesto Justiniano, told the AFP news agency on Friday that the DEA, expelled by socialist former president Evo Morales in 2008, will be invited to return to the country.
Justiniano – part of the new administration of President Rodrigo Paz, a pro-business conservative who took office on November 8 – said “there is a political commitment” for the agency to return to Bolivia, where he said cocaine production had spiralled out of control.
“We will no longer be an isolated country, a country that is self-absorbed and acts solely out of political necessity,” Justiniano said.
“International cooperation is fundamental” to fighting the drug trade, he added.
Paz, the leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Party, is aiming for a sharp political, economic, social and diplomatic shift away from the policies of Bolivia’s socialist leaders.
