The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources takes part in an operation against Amazon deforestation at an illegal mining camp.

How Trump’s Anti-Environment Crusade
Enriches Drug Traffickers
Kate Surma / Inside Climate News

(August 27, 2025) ^— President Donald Trump vowed to combat drug trafficking organizations and the opioid crisis, but a new report details how his extensive cuts to staff and programs targeting environmental crimes are hindering those efforts.

The president has pledged to combat transnational drug organizations. Yet these groups make vast sums from environmental crimes, and his administration has gutted personnel and programs that targeted them, [the] report shows.

Illegal gold mining, one of the most ruinous environmental crimes, is filling the coffers of transnational drug organizations, generating more money than the drug trade in some countries, according to research from the nonpartisan Financial Accountability & Corporate Transparency Coalition.

The report warns that the illegal gold trade in the Americas threatens the integrity of the U.S. financial system, undermines regional security and provides funding for drug traffickers and other criminal organizations. That allows these groups to carry out operations that endanger Americans, especially with drug overdoses being a leading cause of death in the United States.

Yet, since taking office, Trump has reassigned top environmental crime prosecutors at the Department of Justice to other issues; reduced staff at the Department of Homeland Security’s Wildlife and Environmental Crimes Unit, the top agency fighting illegal gold extraction; laid off personnel at the Department of State working on the issue; and cut U.S. funding for programs to combat illegal gold mining and prosecute perpetrators.