Noboa Expands Emergency Powers as Violence Surges
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- Noboa's government has expanded emergency rule and deployed 75,000 troops in what the defense ministry calls Ecuador's "largest internal security mobilization in the country's recent history," with over 70% of the population now under nightly curfew
- Ecuador recorded 9,216 murders in 2025—the highest figure in its history—giving it a homicide rate of roughly 51 per 100,000, the most violent in the Western Hemisphere, despite the militarization push
- Twenty members of Congress sent a letter demanding the Pentagon's "immediate suspension" of joint U.S.-Ecuador military operations, citing alleged bombings and torture of civilians and warning of an "alarming authoritarian and anti-democratic drift"
- A U.S.-backed anti-narcotics strike near the Colombian border hit a civilian dairy farm rather than a drug target, according to a New York Times investigation; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nonetheless presented the operation as a precedent for land-based strikes
- Ecuador's electoral authorities suspended the opposition Citizens' Revolution party and dissolved Construye and Unidad Popular ahead of next year's local elections, while Guayaquil mayor Aquiles Álvarez was arrested in a pre-dawn raid and held in a CECOT-model prison before judges who ordered his release were disqualified
- Ecuadorian forces raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito in April 2024 to seize former Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been granted political asylum; the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has since said his life is at risk
- Investigative journalists have repeatedly found cocaine in banana shipments tied to the Noboa family business empire, a conduit for exports to Europe—yet the Trump administration has continued to treat Ecuador as a core partner in the "Shield of the Americas" alliance
Why it matters: Noboa's escalation has failed on its own terms: 9,216 murders in 2025 is Ecuador's worst year ever, and 70% of citizens now live under curfew, yet he has used the crisis to dissolve opposition parties, jail a rival mayor, and purge judges. With 20 members of Congress already calling for suspension of joint military operations and documented civilian casualties from a US-backed strike, the Trump administration's continued embrace of Noboa is now a live liability in Washington.
