The United States has deployed more than 4,000 Marines and sailors, along with a nuclear-powered submarine, to the Caribbean in what officials describe as a major anti-drug trafficking and security operation.
According to CNN, the deployment involves the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which have been repositioning under U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) over the past three weeks. Pentagon officials said the buildup is part of a broader campaign to target cartels and transnational criminal organizations designated as narco-terrorist groups.
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement posted on the Department of State’s social media, confirmed the initiative, framing it as a direct confrontation with organized crime networks operating across international waters.
“There are designated narco-terrorist groups operating in the region. Some of them use international transits to move poison into the U.S. Those groups will be confronted. The President made that clear from the time he was inaugurated,” Rubio declared.
Rubio also singled out Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro, describing his administration as illegitimate. “The Maduro regime is not a government. It is a criminal enterprise that has taken control of national territory and is threatening U.S. oil companies operating lawfully in Guyana. The President has been very firm: anything that threatens the United States of America will be confronted,” he said.
The latest deployment follows reports by Reuters last week that U.S. air and naval forces were being positioned in the southern Caribbean Sea to counter cartel activities. Trump administration officials, according to those reports, have pushed the Pentagon to prepare military options targeting Latin American gangs designated as global terrorist organizations.
The U.S. has long accused Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua, along with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and others, of fueling drug trafficking networks that threaten U.S. security. In recent months, the U.S. military has intensified aerial surveillance of Mexican cartels and considered new methods of disrupting their activities. Mexico, however, has consistently rejected Washington’s offers to send U.S. troops into its territory.
Washington has also escalated pressure on Maduro personally. Since 2020, the U.S. government has offered escalating bounties for his arrest on narcotics charges—rising from US$15 million in 2020 to US$25 million in January, and doubling again on August 7, 2024, to US$50 million.
Rubio announced the increase, stating that Maduro has for over a decade acted as a leader of the Cartel de los Soles, a network allegedly responsible for smuggling vast quantities of drugs into the U.S. The cartel was officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department in July. “Since 2020, Maduro has strangled democracy and clung to power in Venezuela,” Rubio said. “Maduro claimed victory in the country’s July 28, 2024, presidential election but presented no credible evidence. The United States does not recognize him as Venezuela’s president.”
Venezuela’s foreign minister, Yván Gil, dismissed the deployment as “a crude political propaganda operation” designed to undermine the country’s sovereignty and destabilize the region.
The move also raises concerns in the wider Caribbean, particularly for neighboring Guyana, which has seen heightened tensions with Venezuela over border disputes and energy exploration.
Efforts to obtain comment from Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Homeland Security, Roger Alexander, were unsuccessful at press time.
