Terror groups are handing Venezuela’s critical minerals over to China

The largest armed presence inside Venezuela today isn’t Venezuelan at all — it’s Colombia’s ELN and FARC militia dissidents, who control vast stretches of the border region in a brutal war for territory.

To pay for guns and grenades, these Colombian terrorist organizations are plundering Venezuela’s critical minerals and selling them to Chinese buyers for big profits. More than 56,000 people have been displaced, fleeing the bloodshed.

Speaking from Barranquilla, Colombia last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said these “terrorist organizations … operate with impunity” in the border region “entering [Colombia] committing crimes, murders, and attacks, and then returning and hiding in [Venezuela].” To help Colombia’s new government crack down on terrorists, however, the Trump administration must put pressure on the corrupt Venezuelan officials providing them protection .

It is time for America to take decisive action against the corrupt government of interim President Delcy Rodríguez. Rubio’s remarks were a welcome moment of clarity from an administration that too often has treated the Rodríguez government as a security partner rather than as the landlord of the region’s most dangerous terrorist safe haven. Venezuela’s cartels, like Tren de Aragua — which authorized its members to kill U.S. law enforcement officials — are also making big money from gold and critical minerals.

Across southern Venezuela’s Orinoco region, officials and military commanders partner with terrorists, cartels, and “sindicatos” — Venezuela’s mining-territory crime syndicates — providing trading permits, fuel and access to equipment for a bribe. These groups are given free rein to extract mineral resources: tin, rare earths and coltan — essential inputs for jet engines, data centers, nuclear reactors, and military systems.

These minerals aren’t headed for the U.S. defense sector, however. Instead, Chinese intermediaries line up to buy the illicit minerals at high prices. Armed groups smuggle the extracted minerals to ports where they can be shipped to China. Some go through the port of La Guaira, where corrupt officials provide falsified export paperwork. Most of the minerals are sent via the Colombian border, in official vehicles at legal crossings, or in canoes packed with up to 20 tons of raw ore, paying off military officials along the way.

Every shipment of illicit critical minerals that Venezuelan criminal groups sell to Chinese buyers increases Beijing’s mineral processing chokehold and weakens America’s economic security. Venezuela’s abundant minerals and rare earths could help America break China’s monopoly, while driving U.S. investment into Venezuela. Those opportunities are lost if the Trump administration continues to disregard the collaboration of corrupt Venezuela officials and the terrorists.

All of this undermines American interests in the region. U.S. government regulations meant to encourage investment are compounding the problem. Washington has issued sanctions carveouts that allow U.S. companies to buy Venezuelan gold and minerals. But these “licenses” assume that a legitimate mineral market exists. It does not.

Because virtually all Venezuelan minerals are illicitly produced, money under the license is certain to be diverted to criminal groups, giving a veneer of legitimacy to terror financing. The Treasury Department even exempted U.S. banks from complying with the Bank Secrecy Act in Venezuela — a clear admission that the economy is too opaque to police.

Still, American businesses are sitting on the sidelines. To push things forward, the Trump administration mediated a deal to bring hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan gold to the U.S. But given the likely linkages to criminal gangs and corrupt officials, no refiners are willing to purchase the gold. Instead, criminal groups are getting paid while American taxpayers are left holding the bag.

Under these circumstances, meaningful U.S. private sector investment is unlikely. Instead of creating the conditions for high-integrity American firms to operate, the Trump administration’s policy of protecting Delcy Rodriguez is boosting “ask-no-questions” Chinese buyers, while shielding criminal groups, encouraging rampant bribery, and watching passively as a flood of illicit mining cash funds the region’s terrorism and violence.

The choice is in Washington’s hands: keep backing the Rodriguez regime while it shelters terrorists and turns a blind eye to Beijing-bound critical minerals or start treating Venezuela’s corrupt and criminal ecosystem itself as the target. As Rubio said, the current situation is “not sustainable. We have to confront it.”

Josh Birenbaum is deputy director of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Cristina Vollmer Burelli is founder of the advocacy group SOSOrinoco , which documents and denounces illegal mining in Venezuela.