The United States has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to the Caribbean as tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela continue to escalate, a spokesperson for the Defense Department said Friday.
“The enhanced U.S. force presence in the [U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility] will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere,” wrote Sean Parnell, DOD spokesperson, in a statement shared on social media Friday.
“These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle [transnational criminal organizations].”
Tensions between the United States and Venezuela under the leadership of Nicolas Maduro have ramped up in recent weeks after President Donald Trump began ordering strikes on suspected drug-carrying vessels headed toward the United States. Maduro was indicted on narco-terrorism charges by the Justice Department in 2020, and the Trump administration continues to consider outright assassinating him, according to an anonymous senior Trump official.
“The dispatch of a carrier is the strongest sign yet that the Trump administration envisions expanding the airstrikes that so far have been limited to striking small vessels to other targets on land in what officials have said is an effort to destroy drug-smuggling operations and destabilize Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro’s government,” wrote journalist Shelby Holliday in a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal.
“The Pentagon was already carrying out a large buildup of combat power in the region. A carrier in the region would enable commanders to carry out airstrikes at a higher tempo and shorten the distance U.S. planes would have to fly to reach targets on land.”
The latest strike on suspected drug-carrying vessels came late Thursday night after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday morning that another six suspected “narco-terrorists” were killed. Critics have labeled the targeted strikes as violations of international law.