Nicolas Maduro

Tensions have grown between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago over support for US military action in the Caribbean.

Venezuela has declared Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister a persona non grata, as the two countries continue to feud over United States military activity in the Caribbean Sea.

On Tuesday, Venezuela’s National Assembly voted in favour of the sanction against Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has been sparring with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. It designates her as unwelcome in the country and bars her from entering.

Asked a day earlier about the prospect, Persad-Bissessar told the news agency AFP: “Why would they think I would want to go to Venezuela?”

The two countries – separated by a small bay just 11km (7 miles) wide at its narrowest point – have been at loggerheads in recent weeks over the US military activity in the region.

Persad-Bissessar is one of the few Caribbean leaders to applaud the build-up of US military forces in the Caribbean as well as its bombing campaign against alleged drug-trafficking boats.

“I, along with most of the country, am happy that the US naval deployment is having success in their mission,” Persad-Bissessar said shortly after the first missile strike was announced on September 2.

“I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all, violently.”

But that stance has put her at odds with Maduro’s government. Just this week, Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Yvan Gil Pinto told the United Nations General Assembly that the US strikes were an “illegal and completely immoral military threat hanging over our heads”.

Legal experts have compared the bombing campaign with extrajudicial killings, citing likely violations of international law. At least 13 strikes have occurred so far against 14 maritime vessels, most of them small boats.

An estimated 57 people have been killed in the US attacks. Their identities are unknown, and no definitive evidence has been provided to the public so far to link them to drug trafficking.

Relations frayed over US strikes

Labelling Persad-Bissessar a persona non grata is just the latest chapter in the tit-for-tat between the two countries.

On Tuesday, AFP reported that Trinidad and Tobago was considering a “mass deportation” of undocumented migrants, most of whom are Venezuelans, from its territory.

According to a memorandum reviewed by the news agency, Trinidad and Tobago’s homeland security minister, Roger Alexander, ordered a halt to any planned releases of “illegal immigrants” in detention.

“Consideration is currently being given to the implementation of a mass deportation exercise,” the memo said.

That comes after Maduro ordered the “immediate suspension” of a major gas deal with Trinidad and Tobago on Monday, citing the island nation’s reception of a US warship.

The island is hosting one of several US warships deployed near Venezuelan waters by President Donald Trump. Venezuelan officials have accused the US president of seeking to overturn Maduro’s government.

In cancelling the gas deal, Maduro accused Persad-Bissessar of transforming the Caribbean nation “into an aircraft carrier of the American empire against Venezuela”.

The Pentagon has so far deployed seven warships, a submarine, drones and fighter jets to the Caribbean, as well as another warship to the Gulf of Mexico.

The rate of the US bombing campaign has increased in recent weeks, with six strikes announced over the last week alone.

Its scope has also broadened, with strikes taking place this month in the Eastern Pacific Ocean near Colombia, as well as the Caribbean waters off Venezuela’s shores.

Some observers believe the Trump administration is using the US military to pressure and destabilise Maduro, who was re-elected last year in what the US has dismissed as a fraudulent election.

Persad-Bissessar, however, has been steadfast in her support of the US campaign, saying she would rather see drug traffickers “blown to pieces” than have them contribute to deaths in her country.

USS Gravely’s arrival comes as US military build-up in the region has increased tensions between Washington and Caracas.

A United States warship has arrived in Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation close to Venezuela, as tensions between Washington and Caracas continue to mount.

The USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer, reached the Trinidadian capital Port of Spain on Sunday with members of the US Marines on board, ahead of planned joint military exercises.

The warship has advanced weapons systems and can operate helicopters. Its recent activities include a deployment for counter-narcotics operations.

Its arrival near Venezuela comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump continues to increase the US’s military presence in the Caribbean, where it has in recent weeks conducted controversial, deadly strikes against boats that Washington claims are involved in drug trafficking.

The standoff between the two countries escalated further on Friday, when the Pentagon confirmed that it was deploying the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the region.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who was re-elected last year in what the US has dismissed as a fraudulent election, accused Washington of “fabricating” a war against him.

Without providing any evidence, the US president has accused Maduro of being the leader of the organised crime gang Tren de Aragua.

Reporting from Port of Spain on Sunday, Al Jazeera’s Julia Galiano said the Trinidadian government wanted to assure its people that they shouldn’t be worried by the warship’s arrival.

The country’s defence minister told Al Jazeera on Saturday that joint military operations were held regularly and that the US vessel’s presence was not a prelude to war.

However, Galiano said that locals had expressed “a lot more reservation” about the warship.

“People we spoke to today, for example, in the Sunday market, told us that they were frightened about what this could mean for their country,” she said.

Trinidadians who spoke to news agencies expressed similar concerns.

“If anything should happen with Venezuela and America, we as people who live on the outskirts of it … could end up getting a lash any time,” 64-year-old Daniel Holder told the AFP news agency.

“I am against my country being part of this,” he added.

Javed Ali, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who specialises in national security, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the US’s actions in the region involved “the projection of a significant amount of military force” to put pressure on the Maduro regime.

“It is so difficult to know what the White House is thinking,” he noted, adding that the US military presence is not big enough to launch an invasion of Venezuela.

“Looking at how the US has conducted wars in the past, it would not be with a small footprint like this,” Ali said.

As part of its anti-drug operations, Washington deployed eight navy ships, 10 F-35 warplanes and a nuclear-powered submarine to the region in August, its largest military build-up in the area since its 1989 invasion of Panama.

On Saturday, Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino said his country had begun coastal defence exercises to protect itself against “large-scale military threats”.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has said the United States government is “fabricating” a war against him as Washington sent the world’s biggest warship towards the South American country.

It signals a major escalation of the US’s military presence in the region amid speculation of an attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Maduro said in a national broadcast on Friday night that US President Donald Trump’s administration is “fabricating a new eternal war” as the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, which can host up to 90 aeroplanes and attack helicopters, moves closer to Venezuela.

Trump has accused him, without providing evidence, of being the leader of the organised crime gang Tren de Aragua.

“They are fabricating an extravagant narrative, a vulgar, criminal and totally fake one,” Maduro added. “Venezuela is a country that does not produce cocaine leaves.”

Tren de Aragua, which traces its roots to a Venezuelan prison, is not known for having a big role in global drug trafficking but for its involvement in contract killings, extortion and people smuggling.

Maduro was widely accused of stealing last year’s election in Venezuela, and countries, including the US, have called for him to go.

Tensions are mounting in the region, with Trump saying he has authorised CIA operations in Venezuela and that he is considering ground attacks against alleged drug cartels in the Caribbean country.

Since September 2, US forces have bombed 10 boats, with eight of the attacks occurring in the Caribbean, for their role in allegedly trafficking drugs into the US. At least 43 people have died in the attacks.

United Nations officials and scholars of international law have said that the strikes are in clear violation of US and international law and amount to extrajudicial executions.

Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said Saturday the country is conducting military exercises to protect its coast against any potential “covert operations”.

“We are conducting an exercise that began 72 hours ago, a coastal defence exercise … to protect ourselves not only from large-scale military threats but also to protect ourselves from drug trafficking, terrorist threats and covert operations that aim to destabilise the country internally,” Padrino said.

Venezuelan state television showed images of military personnel deployed in nine coastal states and a member of Maduro’s civilian militia carrying a Russian Igla-S shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile.

“CIA is present not only in Venezuela but everywhere in the world,” Padrino said. “They may deploy countless CIA-affiliated units in covert operations from any part of the nation, but any attempt will fail.”

Since August, Washington has deployed a fleet of eight US Navy ships, 10 F-35 warplanes and a nuclear-powered submarine for anti-drug operations, but Caracas maintains these manoeuvres mask a plan to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Maduro said on Saturday he had started legal proceedings to revoke the citizenship and cancel the passport of opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez, whom he accuses of egging on an invasion.

Lopez, a well-known Venezuelan opposition figure who has been exiled in Spain since 2020, has publicly expressed his support for the deployment of US ships in the Caribbean and attacks on suspected drug trafficking vessels.

The opposition leader reacted on his X account, dismissing the move because “according to the Constitution, no Venezuelan born in Venezuela can have their nationality revoked.” He once more expressed support for a US military deployment and military actions in the country.

Lopez spent more than three years in a military prison after participating in antigovernment protests in 2014. He was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison on charges of “instigation and conspiracy to commit a crime”.

He was later granted house arrest and, after being released by a group of military personnel during a political crisis in Venezuela, left the country in 2020.

In the meantime, the US has also put Colombia’s leadership in its crosshairs.

The US Department of the Treasury slapped sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his family and the South American country’s interior minister, Armando Benedetti.

Friday’s decision marked a significant escalation in the ongoing feud between the left-wing Petro and his US counterpart, the right-wing Trump.

In a statement, the US Treasury accused Petro of failing to rein in Colombia’s cocaine industry and of shielding criminal groups from accountability.

The Treasury cited Petro’s “Total Peace” plan, an initiative designed to bring an end to Colombia’s six-decade-long internal conflict through negotiations with armed rebels and criminal organisations.

Petro, a prolific social media user, quickly shot back that the Treasury’s decision was the culmination of longstanding Republican threats, including from US Senator Bernie Moreno, a critic of his presidency.

Oct. 24 (UPI) — The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is headed to the Caribbean Sea to escalate the nation’s military presence amid strikes on alleged drug-running vessels.

The carrier strike group currently is in the Mediterranean Sea and includes three destroyers, in addition to the aircraft carrier, NBC News reported.

“The enhanced U.S. force presence in the [Southern Command area] 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,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.

“These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle [transnational criminal organizations],” he added.

The strike group will take about a week to cross the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Caribbean for its new deployment, where it will nearly double the number of vessels already deployed there.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the strike group to the Caribbean, where the U.S. military conducted its first nighttime strike on a vessel allegedly running drugs, he announced on Friday.

“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transitioning along a known narco-trafficking route and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth said in a post on X.

“Six male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters,” Hegseth said. “All six terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed.”

The nighttime strike was the third conducted this week, including one in the Pacific Ocean near Central America.

The strike also was the 10th conducted by the U.S. military against alleged drug runners, during which 43 reportedly have been killed while in international waters.

The United States has eight surface vessels, a submarine and about 6,000 sailors deployed in the Caribbean as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on drug running to the United States.

President Donald Trump previously notified Congress that the United States is engaged in conflict with drug cartels that send fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and other potentially deadly and illicit drugs to the nation.

The president also has designated several transnational gangs as terrorist organizations, including the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua.

Trump also has authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela, where it is gathering intelligence on what the administration says is planned drug-smuggling to the United States.

The president is considering allowing strikes inside Venezuela to weaken President Nicolas Maduro‘s administration.

Trump has accused Maduro of profiting from Venezuelan drug smuggling to the United States and flooding the nation with deadly fentanyl and other narcotics.

The Trump administration recently raised to $50 million its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest.

Oct. 24 (UPI) — The Treasury Department announced sanctions against Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego over cocaine production and smuggling into the United States.

The sanctions include Petro’s wife, first lady Veronica del Socorro Alcocer Garcia, his son Nicolas Petro and “close associate” Armando Benedettie, the Treasury Department announced Friday in a news release.

“Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

“President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity,” Bessent said.

“Today, President [Donald] Trump is taking strong action to protect our nation and make clear that we will not tolerate the trafficking of drugs into our nation.”

The sanctions are imposed in accordance with the president’s Executive Order 14059, which targets foreigners who are involved in the global trade of illicit drugs.

The sanctions freeze all property or interests in property owned by the Petro, his wife, son and associate that are located in the United States or territories controlled by the United States.

All such properties must be reported to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The Treasury Department said Colombia is the world’s leading producer and exporter of cocaine that often is bought by Mexican drug cartels and smuggled into the United States.

Petro on Oct. 8 said an alleged drug-smuggling vessel that was sunk by the U.S. military in the Caribbean was manned by Colombian citizens.

He has recalled the Colombian ambassador to the United States after the U.S. military sank a vessel that was near Colombian waters and Trump halted U.S. financial support for Colombia.

Petro also met with U.S. diplomat John McNamara on Monday to ease tensions between Colombia and the Trump administration.

Petro is a former guerrilla member who became Colombia’s president in 2022 and “has provided narco-terrorist organizations with benefits under the auspices of his ‘total peace’ plan,” according to the Treasury Department.

Such policies have led to record cultivation of coca and production of cocaine, which the Treasury Department said prompted Trump to declare Colombia a “major drug-transit or major drug-producing country” that has failed to uphold its responsibility to control such activities.

The Treasury also said Petro has allied with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro‘s “narco-terrorist regime” and the Cartel de Los Soles.

The Colombian president’s activities create a significant risk of the international proliferation of illicit drugs, according to the federal agency.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says she does not agree with US strikes on boats off the coast of South America, when asked about the recent deadly attacks on what the US has claimed are drug traffickers.

Oct. 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump accepted the Architect of Peace Award from the Richard Nixon Foundation during a closed ceremony at the White House on Tuesday morning.

Trump earned the award due to his central role in negotiating the current cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel to end the unchecked war in Gaza that began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, CBS News reported.

Award presenters included former President Richard Nixon’s daughter, Tricia Nixon Cox, former national security adviser Robert O’Brien and acting U.S. archivist Jim Byron, CBS News reported.

Trump had argued he deserved to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for securing a cease-fire in Gaza and ending other wars.

Among wars that Trump has said he ended are those between Cambodia and Thailand, the Congo and Rwanda, Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Serbia and Kosovo, the president told the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 24.

The Nobel Peace Prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who opposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in that nation’s 2024 presidential election, which exit polling suggests Machado won despite Maduro’s victory claim.

The Architect of Peace award is not given annually but instead when foundation representatives decide one has been earned by those who “embody [Nixon’s] lifelong goal of shaping a more peaceful world,” according to the Architect of Peace Award website.

The award last year honored former President George W. Bush, Farah Pahlavi and Reza Pahlavi.

Bush received the award for establishing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which globally has saved millions of lives.

The Pahlavis received the award for championing a secular Iranian government, religious freedom and human rights, according to the Nixon Foundation.

Farah Pahlavi is Iran’s former queen, while Reza is her son.

US leader says suspected drug traffickers to be sent to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

President Donald Trump says two surviving “narcoterrorists” from a semi-submersible vessel destroyed by the US military in the Caribbean will be sent to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.

He said that US intelligence has confirmed the vessel was carrying fentanyl and other narcotics.

The vessel was targeted on Thursday in what Trump described as a strike aimed at disrupting a major drug trafficking route.

Two crew members were killed, he said, while two others survived and were airlifted by US forces in a helicopter rescue operation to a nearby US Navy warship.

The US military held the survivors on board at least until Friday evening.

The press office for Ecuador’s government said it was not aware of the plans for repatriation. There was no immediate comment from Colombian authorities.

At least six vessels, most of them speedboats, have been targeted by US strikes in the Caribbean since September, with Venezuela alleged to be the origin of some of them.

Washington says its campaign is dealing a decisive blow to drug trafficking, but it has provided no evidence that the people killed were drug smugglers.

With Trump’s confirmation of the death toll on his Truth Social platform, that means US military actions against vessels in the region have killed at least 29 people.

The president has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. He is relying on the same legal authority used by the administration of former President George W Bush when it declared a war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the US. This includes the ability to capture and detain combatants and use lethal force to take out their leadership. Trump is also treating the suspected traffickers as if they were enemy soldiers in a traditional war.

Previous similar strikes have raised concerns from Democratic lawmakers and legal experts who argue that such operations may exceed accepted wartime authority and risk violating international law.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said the latest targeted vessel had been “built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs”.

US military buildup

The mission comes amid a sharp US military buildup across the Caribbean, involving guided missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear-powered submarine and about 6,500 troops. The escalation has fuelled accusations that Washington is inching towards direct confrontation with Venezuela.

On Wednesday, Trump confirmed that he had authorised the CIA to carry out covert operations inside Venezuela, intensifying fears in Caracas that the US is attempting to topple President Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro has repeatedly denied involvement in drug trafficking and accused Washington of fabricating a narco-terrorism narrative as a pretext for trying to change the government. He condemned the recent maritime strikes as “a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law”.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, has formally requested the UN Security Council to issue a determination that the US strikes are illegal and to reaffirm Venezuela’s sovereign rights.

In the early days of President Trump’s second term, the U.S. appeared keen to cooperate with Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader. Special envoy Ric Grenell met Maduro, working with him to coordinate deportation flights to Caracas, a prisoner exchange deal and an agreement allowing Chevron to drill Venezuelan oil.

Grenell told disappointed members of Venezuela’s opposition that Trump’s domestic goals took priority over efforts to promote democracy. “We’re not interested in regime change,” Grenell told the group, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

But Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of State, had a different vision.

In a parallel call with María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, two leaders of the opposition, Rubio affirmed U.S. support “for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela” and called González “the rightful president” of the beleaguered nation after Maduro rigged last year’s election in his favor.

Rubio, now also serving as national security advisor, has grown closer to Trump and crafted an aggressive new policy toward Maduro that has brought Venezuela and the United States to the brink of military confrontation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio whispers to President Trump during a roundtable meeting at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Grenell has been sidelined, two sources told The Times, as the U.S. conducts an unprecedented campaign of deadly strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats — and builds up military assets in the Caribbean. Trump said Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in the South American nation, and that strikes on land targets could be next.

“I think Venezuela is feeling the heat,” he said.

The pressure campaign marks a major victory for Rubio, the son of Cuban emigres and an unexpected power player in the administration who has managed to sway top leaders of the isolationist MAGA movement to his lifelong effort to topple Latin America’s leftist authoritarians.

“It’s very clear that Rubio has won,” said James B. Story, who served as ambassador to Venezuela under President Biden. “The administration is applying military pressure in the hope that somebody inside of the regime renders Maduro to justice, either by exiling him, sending him to the United States or sending him to his maker.”

In a recent public message to Trump, Maduro acknowledged that Rubio is now driving White House policy: “You have to be careful because Marco Rubio wants your hands stained with blood, with South American blood, Caribbean blood, Venezuelan blood,” Maduro said.

As a senator from Florida, Rubio represented exiles from three leftist autocracies — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and for years he has made it his mission to weaken their governments. He says his family could not return to Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution seven decades ago. He has long maintained that eliminating Maduro would deal a fatal blow to Cuba, whose economy has been buoyed by billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil in the face of punishing U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, Rubio pushed Trump to back Juan Guaidó, a Venezuelan opposition leader who sought unsuccessfully to topple Maduro.

Rubio later encouraged Trump to publicly support Machado, who was barred from the ballot in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, and who last week was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pro-democracy efforts. González, who ran in Machado’s place, won the election, according to vote tallies gathered by the opposition, yet Maduro declared victory.

Rubio was convinced that only military might would bring change to Venezuela, which has been plunged into crisis under Maduro’s rule, with a quarter of the population fleeing poverty, violence and political repression.

But there was a hitch. Trump has repeatedly vowed to not intervene in the politics of other nations, telling a Middle Eastern audience in May that the U.S. “would no longer be giving you lectures on how to live.”

Denouncing decades of U.S. foreign policy, Trump complained that “the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.”

To counter that sentiment, Rubio painted Maduro in a new light that he hoped would spark interest from Trump, who has been fixated on combating immigration, illegal drugs and Latin American cartels since his first presidential campaign.

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, right, and opposition leader María Corina Machado greet supporters during a campaign rally in Valencia before the country’s presidential election in 2024.

(Ariana Cubillos / Associated Press)

Going after Maduro, Rubio argued, was not about promoting democracy or a change of governments. It was striking a drug kingpin fueling crime in American streets, an epidemic of American overdoses, and a flood of illegal migration to America’s borders.

Rubio tied Maduro to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang whose members the secretary of State says are “worse than Al Qaeda.”

“Venezuela is governed by a narco-trafficking organization that has empowered itself as a nation state,” he said during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Meanwhile, prominent members of Venezuela’s opposition pushed the same message. “Maduro is the head of a narco-terrorist structure,” Machado told Fox News last month.

Security analysts and U.S. intelligence officials suggest that the links between Maduro and Tren de Aragua are overblown.

A declassified memo by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found no evidence of widespread cooperation between Maduro’s government and the gang. It also said Tren de Aragua does not pose a threat to the U.S.

The gang does not traffic fentanyl, and the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that just 8% of cocaine that reaches the U.S. passes through Venezuelan territory.

Still, Rubio’s strategy appears to have worked.

In July, Trump declared that Tren de Aragua was a terrorist group led by Maduro — and then ordered the Pentagon to use military force against cartels that the U.S. government had labeled terrorists.

Trump deployed thousands of U.S. troops and a small armada of ships and warplanes to the Caribbean and has ordered strikes on five boats off the coast of Venezuela, resulting in 24 deaths. The administration says the victims were “narco-terrorists” but has provided no evidence.

Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served as special envoy to Venezuela in Trump’s first term, said he believes the White House will carry out limited strikes in Venezuela.

“I think the next step is that they’re going to hit something in Venezuela — and I don’t mean boots on the ground. That’s not Trump,” Abrams said. “It’s a strike, and then it’s over. That’s very low risk to the United States.”

He continued: “Now, would it be nice if that kind of activity spurred a colonel to lead a coup? Yeah, it would be nice. But the administration is never going to say that.”

Even if Trump refrains from a ground invasion, there are major risks.

“If it’s a war, then what is the war’s aim? Is it to overthrow Maduro? Is it more than Maduro? Is it to get a democratically elected president and a democratic regime in power?” said John Yoo, a professor of law at UC Berkeley, who served as a top legal advisor to the George W. Bush administration. “The American people will want to know what’s the end state, what’s the goal of all of this.”

“Whenever you have two militaries bristling that close together, there could be real action,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at the think tank Chatham House. “Trump is trying to do this on the cheap. He’s hoping maybe he won’t have to commit. But it’s a slippery slope. This could draw the United States into a war.”

Sabatini and others added that even if the U.S. pressure drives out Maduro, what follows is far from certain.

Venezuela is dominated by a patchwork of guerrilla and paramilitary groups that have enriched themselves with gold smuggling, drug trafficking and other illicit activities. None have incentive to lay down arms.

And the country’s opposition is far from unified.

Machado, who dedicated her Nobel Prize to Trump in a clear effort to gain his support, says she is prepared to govern Venezuela. But there are others — both in exile and in Maduro’s administration — who would like to lead the country.

Machado supporter Juan Fernandez said anything would be better than maintaining the status quo.

“Some say we’re not prepared, that a transition would cause instability,” he said. “How can Maduro be the secure choice when 8 million Venezuelans have left, when there is no gasoline, political persecution and rampant inflation?”

Fernandez praised Rubio for pushing the Venezuela issue toward “an inflection point.”

What a difference, he said, to have a decision-maker in the White House with family roots in another country long oppressed by an authoritarian regime.

“He perfectly understands our situation,” Fernandez said. “And now he has one of the highest positions in the United States.”

Linthicum reported from Mexico City, Wilner from Dallas and Ceballos from Washington. Special correspondent Mery Mogollón in Caracas contributed to this report.

Oct. 15 (UPI) — The CIA is authorized to conduct operations in Venezuela and likely has been for at least a couple of months, President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday.

Trump commented on a possible CIA deployment in Venezuela when a reporter asked why he authorized the CIA to work in the South American nation during a Wednesday news conference.

The president said he has two reasons for authorizing the CIA to be involved in Venezuela.

“They have emptied their prisons into the United States,” Trump said. “They came in through the border because we had an open-border policy.”

“They’ve allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, people from mental institutions and insane asylums emptied out into the United States,” Trump said. “We’re bringing them back.”

The president said Venezuela is not the only country to do so, “but they’re the worst abuser” and called the South American nation’s leaders “down and dirty.”

He said Venezuela also is sending a lot of drugs into the United States.

“A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you see it,” the president explained. “We’re going to stop them by land, also.”

Trump declined to answer a follow-up question regarding whether or not the CIA is authorized to “take out” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The president called the question a fair one but said it would be “ridiculous” for him to answer it.

The president’s answer regarding CIA deployment in Venezuela comes after he earlier said the U.S. military obtains intelligence on likely drug smuggling operations in Venezuela.

Such intelligence enabled the military to strike a vessel carrying six passengers off the coast of Venezuela on Tuesday.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks and was transiting along a known [designated terrorist organization] route,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the military strike.

All six crew members were killed in the lethal kinetic airstrike on the vessel, and no U.S. forces were harmed.

Trump told media that Venezuela and a lot of other countries are “feeling heat” and he “won’t let our country be ruined” by them, ABC News reported.

The president in September notified several Congressional committees that the nation is in “active conflict” with transnational gangs and drug cartels, many of which he has designated as terrorist organizations.

Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua is among those so designated, and the United States has a $50 million bounty on Maduro, whom Trump says profits from the drug trade.

During Trump’s first term in office, the CIA similarly worked against drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in Central and South America.

The Biden administration continued those efforts, including flying drones over suspected cartel sites in Mexico to identify possible fentanyl labs.

United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that he has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

He added that his administration was also mulling land-based military operations inside Venezuela, as tensions between Washington and Caracas soar over multiple deadly US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, Trump held a news conference with some of his top law enforcement officials, where he faced questions about an earlier news report in The New York Times about the CIA authorisation. One reporter asked directly, “Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela?”

“I authorised for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”

“The other thing,” he continued, was Venezuela’s role in drug-trafficking. He then appeared to imply that the US would take actions on foreign soil to prevent the flow of narcotics and other drugs.

“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump said. “A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.  So you get to see that. But we’re going to stop them by land also.”

Trump’s remarks mark the latest escalation in his campaign against Venezuela, whose leader, Nicolas Maduro, has long been a target for the US president, stretching back to Trump’s first term in office.

Already, both leaders have bolstered their military forces along the Caribbean Sea in a show of potential force.

The Venezuelan government hit back at Trump’s latest comments and the authorised CIA operations, accusing the US of violating international law and the UN Charter.

“The purpose of US actions is to create legitimacy for an operation to change the regime in Venezuela, with the ultimate goal of taking control of all the country’s resources,” the Maduro government said in a statement.

Earlier, at the news conference, reporters sought to confront Trump over whether he was trying to enforce regime change in Caracas.

“Does the CIA have authority to take out Maduro?” one journalist asked at the White House on Wednesday.

“Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given,” Trump said, demurring. “Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”

He then offered an addendum: “But I think Venezuela’s feeling heat.”

Claiming wartime powers

Trump’s responses, at times meandering, touched on his oft-repeated claims about Venezuela.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has sought to assume wartime powers – using laws like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – by alleging that Venezuela had masterminded an “invasion” of migrants and criminal groups onto US soil.

He has offered little proof for his assertions, though, and his statements have been undercut by the assessments of his own intelligence community.

In May, for example, a declassified US report revealed that intelligence officials had found no evidence directly linking Maduro to criminal groups like Tren de Aragua, as Trump has alleged.

Still, on Wednesday, Trump revisited the baseless claim that Venezuela under Maduro had sent prisoners and people with mental health conditions to destabilise the US.

“Many countries have done it, but not like Venezuela.  They were down and dirty,” Trump said.

The authorisation of CIA operations inside Venezuela is the latest indication that Trump has been signing secret proclamations to lay the groundwork for lethal action overseas, despite insisting in public that he seeks peace globally.

In August, for instance, anonymous sources told the US media that Trump had also signed an order allowing the US military to take action against drug-trafficking cartels and other Latin American criminal networks.

And in October, it emerged that Trump had sent a memo to the US Congress asserting that the country was in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels, whom he termed “unlawful combatants”.

Many such groups, including Tren de Aragua, have also been added to the US’s list of “foreign terrorist organisations”, though experts point out that the label alone does not provide a legal basis for military action.

Strikes in the Caribbean Sea

Nevertheless, the US under Trump has taken a series of escalatory military actions, including by conducting multiple missile strikes on small vessels off the Venezuelan coast.

At least five known air strikes have been conducted on boats since September 2, killing 27 people.

The most recent attack was announced on Tuesday in a social media post: A video Trump shared showed a boat floating in the water, before a missile set it alight. Six people were reportedly killed in that bombing.

Many legal experts and former military officials have said that the strikes appear to be a clear violation of international law. Drug traffickers have not traditionally met the definition of armed combatants in a war. And the US government has so far not presented any public evidence to back its claims that the boats were indeed carrying narcotics headed for America.

But Trump has justified the strikes by saying they will save American lives lost to drug addiction.

He has maintained the people on board the targeted boats were “narco-terrorists” headed to the US.

On Wednesday, he again brushed aside a question about the lack of evidence. He also defended himself against concerns that the bombings amount to extrajudicial killings.

“When they’re loaded up with drugs, they’re fair game,” Trump told reporters, adding there was “fentanyl dust all over the boat after those bombs go off”.

He added, “We know we have much information about each boat that goes. Deep, strong information.”

Framing the bombing campaign in the Caribbean as a success, Trump then explained his administration might start to pivot its strategy.

“ We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now, we’ll stop it by land,” he said of the alleged drug trafficking. He joked that even fishermen had decided to stay off the waters.

“ We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control.”

Oct. 13 (UPI) — Venezuela announced Monday it will close its embassies in Norway and Australia in a “strategic re-assignment of resources” amid growing tensions with the United States and a Nobel Peace Prize for the opposition.

President Nicolas Maduro announced Venezuela would open new embassies in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe, “two sister nations, strategic allies in the anti-colonial fight and in the resistance against hegemonic pressures,” according to the Caracas government.

“The central objective of this reorganization is to optimize state resources and redefine our diplomatic presence to strengthen alliances with the Global South, promoting solidarity among peoples and cooperation in strategic areas for mutual development,” Venezuela’s foreign ministry wrote in the statement.

Monday’s announcement that Venezuela will close its Oslo embassy comes three days after Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Price for her efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela and end the dictatorship of Maduro as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America.”

Machado was chosen to run against Maduro in Venezuela’s 2011 and 2024 elections, but the government banned her from participating over her activism against the Maduro regime.

Maduro on Sunday responded to Machado’s Nobel Prize, awarded by Norway’s foreign ministry, by calling her “a demonic witch.”

Growing tensions between Venezuela and the United States, which have escalated over U.S. drug strikes on vessels off the country’s Caribbean coast, also played into the decision to relocate embassies to Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso, which are more aligned with Russia.

“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela reaffirms that these actions reflect its unwavering will to defend national sovereignty and actively contribute to the construction of a new world order based on justice, solidarity and inclusion.”

Oct. 3 (UPI) — War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the U.S. military had sunk a “narco-trafficking” vessel in international waters near Venezuela early Friday morning.

Hegseth said the vessel carried four male “narco-terrorists,” all of whom were killed with no harm done to U.S. forces involved in the operation.

“The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics headed to America to poison our people,” Hegseth said in a social media post.

“Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route,” he continued.

“These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over,” Hegseth added.

His post includes unclassified video footage showing an open vessel traveling at high speed on blue waters until it explodes.

The deadly strike is the first this month and the fourth since the Trump administration last month began targeting vessels that the military says were carrying potentially deadly and illicit drugs to the United States.

The strike occurred after the Trump administration recently notified Congress that the U.S. military is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, many of which President Donald Trump has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

“The president has directed these strikes against Venezuelan drug cartels in these boats, consistent with his responsibility to protect the United States’ interests abroad and in furtherance of U.S. national security and foreign policy interests,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told media on Friday.

She said such military strikes fall within the president’s authority as commander in chief and as the nation’s chief executive.

The military actions have drawn scrutiny regarding their legality and among those who suggest it would be better to intercept suspected vessels and capture their crews and cargo.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., criticized Vice President JD Vance earlier praising the deadly strikes that have killed 21 in total.

Congressional Democrats on Sept. 10 sought information from the Trump administration regarding the legality of the strikes in the absence of a Congress-approved declaration of war.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has offered to hold direct talks with the Trump administration regarding the matter.

Maduro also ordered Venezuela’s military to conduct military drills following the U.S. strikes on the alleged Venezuelan drug runners.

Venezuelan government calls on US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to cease ‘thrill-seeking and warmongering posture’.

Venezuela’s government has blasted an “illegal incursion” near its borders by United States warplanes and accused the US of “military harassment” and threatening the “security of the nation”.

Venezuelan Defence Minister General Vladimir Padrino said on Thursday that at least five F-35 fighter jets had been detected, in what he describes as a threat that “US imperialism has dared to bring close to the Venezuelan coast”.

“We’re watching them, I want you to know. And I want you to know that this doesn’t intimidate us. It doesn’t intimidate the people of Venezuela,” Padrino said, speaking from an airbase, according to the Agencia Venezuela news outlet.

“The presence of these planes flying close to our Caribbean Sea is a vulgarity, a provocation, a threat to the security of the nation,” Padrino said.

“I denounce before the world the military harassment, the military threat by the US government against the people of Venezuela, who want peace, work and happiness,” he said.

The presence of the US combat planes was detected by the country’s air defences, air traffic control systems at Maiquetia international airport, which serves the capital Caracas, as well as a commercial airliner, Venezuelan authorities said.

In a joint statement, Venezuela’s foreign and defence ministries said the US combat planes were detected 75km (46.6 miles) “from our shores”. If the planes came no closer than the distance mentioned by Venezuelan authorities, then they would not have violated the country’s airspace, which extends about 12 nautical miles, or 22km, off the coast.

Still, the ministries accused the US of flouting international law and jeopardising civil aviation in the Caribbean Sea.

Venezuela “urges US Secretary of War Peter Hegseth to immediately cease his reckless, thrill-seeking and warmongering posture”, which is disturbing the peace of the Caribbean, the statement added.

Venezuela denuncia incursión ilegal de aviones de combate de EEUU en sus costas: «Provocación que amenaza la soberanía nacional» (+Comunicado)https://t.co/GnR4wLRDzz

— Agencia Venezuela News (@AgenciaVNews) October 2, 2025

The Pentagon has yet to respond to requests for comment from media organisations.

US media reported earlier on Thursday that President Donald Trump has notified Congress that the US is now engaged in “non-international armed conflict” against drug cartels, members of which would now be considered “unlawful combatants”.

Trump’s move to a more formal war footing follows on from the US administration’s rebranding of Latin American drug cartels as “narco-terrorists” who are seeking to destabilise the US by trafficking illegal drugs across US borders.

The move follows weeks of tension with Venezuela after Trump dispatched US F-35 stealth fighter jets to Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean, as part of the biggest military deployment in Latin America in decades and which has already seen air attacks on boats off the Venezuelan coast that the US president alleged were involved in drug trafficking.

So far, 14 people have been killed in the US attacks off Venezuela that officials in Caracas and several independent experts have described as extrajudicial killings.

Eight US warships and a nuclear submarine have also been deployed to the region as part of Trump’s so-called operation to combat drug trafficking, but which Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro says is a covert bid to bring about regime change in his country.

MEXICO CITY — To help justify a sweeping deportation campaign, an extraordinary U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and unprecedented strikes on boats allegedly trafficking drugs, President Trump has repeated a mantra: Tren de Aragua.

He insists that the street gang, which was founded about a decade ago in Venezuela, is attempting an “invasion” of the United States and threatens “the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.” Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump described the group as “an enemy of all humanity” and an arm of Venezuela’s authoritarian government.

According to experts who study the gang and Trump’s own intelligence officials, none of that is true.

While Tren de Aragua has been linked to cases of human trafficking, extortion and kidnapping and has expanded its footprint as Venezuela’s diaspora has spread throughout the Americas, there is little evidence that it poses a threat to the U.S.

“Tren de Aragua does not have the capacity to invade any country, especially the most powerful nation on Earth,” said Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who wrote a book about the gang. The group’s prowess, she said, had been vastly exaggerated by the Trump administration in order to rationalize the deportation of migrants, the militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, and perhaps even an effort to drive Venezuela’s president from power.

“It is being instrumentalized to justify political actions,” she said of the gang. “In no way does it endanger the national security of the United States.”

Before last year, few Americans had heard of Tren de Aragua.

The group formed inside a prison in Venezuela’s Aragua state then spread as nearly 8 million Venezuelans fled poverty and political repression under the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Gang members were accused of sex trafficking, drug sales, homicides and other crimes in countries including Chile, Brazil and Colombia.

As large numbers of Venezuelan migrants began entering the United States after requesting political asylum at the southern border, authorities in a handful of states tied crimes to members of the gang.

It was Trump who put the group on the map.

While campaigning for reelection last year, he appeared at an event in Aurora, Colo., where law enforcement blamed members of Tren de Aragua for several crimes, including murder. Trump stood next to large posters featuring mugshots of Venezuelan immigrants.

“Occupied America. TDA Gang Members,” they read. Banners said: “Deport Illegals Now.”

Shortly after he took office, Trump declared an “invasion” by Tren de Aragua and invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 18th century law that allows the president to deport immigrants during wartime. His administration flew 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they were housed in a notorious prison, even though few of the men had documented links to Tren de Aragua and most had no criminal records in the United States.

In recent months, Trump has again evoked the threat of Tren de Aragua to explain the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops and a small armada of ships and warplanes to the Caribbean.

In July, his administration declared that Tren de Aragua was a terrorist group led by Maduro. That same month, he ordered the Pentagon to use military force against Latin American cartels that his government has labeled terrorists.

Three times in recent weeks, U.S. troops have struck boats off the coast of Venezuela that it said carried Tren de Aragua members who were trafficking drugs.

The administration offered no proof of those claims. Fourteen people have been killed.

Trump has warned that more strikes are to come. “To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence,” he said in his address to the United Nations.

While he insists the strikes are aimed at disrupting the drug trade — claiming without evidence that each boat was carrying enough drugs to kill 25,000 Americans — analysts say there is little evidence that Tren de Aragua is engaged in high-level drug trafficking, and no evidence that it is involved in the movement of fentanyl, which is produced in Mexico by chemicals imported from China. The DEA estimates that just 8% of cocaine that is trafficked into the U.S. passes through Venezuelan territory.

That has fueled speculation about whether the real goal may be regime change.

“Everybody is wondering about Trump’s end game,” said Irene Mia, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank focused on global security.

She said that while there are officials within the White House who appear eager to work with Venezuela, others, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are open about their desire to topple Maduro and other leftist strongmen in the region.

“We’re not going to have a cartel operating or masquerading as a government operating in our own hemisphere,” Rubio told Fox News this month.

Top U.S. intelligence officials have said they don’t believe Maduro has links to Tren de Aragua.

A declassified memo produced by the Office of Director of National Intelligence found no evidence of widespread cooperation between his regime and the gang. It also said Tren de Aragua does not pose a threat to the U.S.: “The small size of TDA’s cells, its focus on low-skill criminal activities and its decentralized structure make it highly unlikely that TDA coordinates large volumes of human trafficking or migrant smuggling.”

Michael Paarlberg, a political scientist who studies Latin America at Virginia Commonwealth University, said he believes Trump is using the gang to achieve political goals — and distract from domestic controversies such as his decision to close the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Tren de Aragua, he said, is much less powerful than other gangs in Latin America. “But it has been a convenient boogeyman for the Trump administration.”

Outburst comes after another US strike on alleged drugs vessel in Caribbean, as Maduro rallies to defend sovereignty.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened Venezuela with “incalculable” consequences if the country does not “immediately” take back immigrants he described as “prisoners” and “people from mental institutions”.

“GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY, RIGHT NOW, OR THE PRICE YOU PAY WILL BE INCALCULABLE!” he said on his Truth Social platform on Saturday. He insisted that Venezuela had “forced” such people into the US and claimed without evidence that “thousands of people have been badly hurt, and even killed, by these ‘Monsters.’”

Trump’s latest outburst came amid soaring tensions, one day after he announced another strike against alleged drug vessels from Venezuela in the Caribbean that killed three men he described as “male narcoterrorists”.

Venezuela, for its part, has accused the US of waging an “undeclared war” in the Caribbean and called for a United Nations investigation into at least three strikes on boats that have killed a total of 17 people since the beginning of September.

Washington has deployed seven warships, a nuclear-powered submarine and F-35 stealth fighters to international waters off Venezuela’s coast, backed by F-35 fighters sent to Puerto Rico, in the biggest US naval deployment in the Caribbean.

Trump says the military is engaged in an anti-drug operation, but has not provided specific evidence to back up claims that the boats targeted so far had actually been trafficking drugs. Legal analysts have warned that the attacks amount to extrajudicial killings.

Reward offered for Maduro’s arrest

The deployment has stoked fears of an attack on Venezuelan territory, with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro repeatedly alleging the US is hoping to drive him from power.

Trump this week denied he was interested in regime change, but Washington last month doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50m, accusing him of links to drug trafficking and criminal groups.

Maduro denies links between high-ranking authorities and drug gangs and pledged to mobilise more than four million militia fighters in response to US “threats” after Washington raised the reward for his arrest.

Maduro sent letter to Trump

Days after the first US strike on a boat from the South American country at the beginning of the month, Maduro offered to engage in direct talks with Washington, according to the Reuters news agency, which viewed a personal letter sent to Trump.

“President, I hope that together we can defeat the falsehoods that have sullied our relationship, which must be historic and peaceful,” Maduro wrote in the letter, calling for “direct and frank” talks to “overcome media noise and fake news”.

In a separate development on Saturday, Maduro’s YouTube channel disappeared from the video-sharing platform on Saturday, according to the AFP news agency.

“Without any justification, the YouTube channel was closed at a time when the US was fully implementing hybrid warfare operations against Venezuela,” AFP cited Telesur as saying on its website.

US military action against a Venezuelan boat sparks condemnation and troop deployments.

Venezuela has accused the United States of illegally boarding and occupying one of its fishing vessels in the country’s special economic zone, further escalating tensions between Caracas and Washington.

In a statement on Saturday, Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the vessel, carrying nine “humble” and “harmless” fishermen, was intercepted by the US destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG-109) on Friday.

“The warship deployed 18 armed agents who boarded and occupied the small, harmless boat for eight hours,” the statement said, calling the incident a “direct provocation through the illegal use of excessive military means”.

The move follows a US military strike last week in the Caribbean that killed 11 Venezuelans and sank a boat that the administration of US President Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, had been transporting narcotics.

Venezuela has rejected these claims, with Minister of the Popular Power for Interior Diosdado Cabello insisting none of those killed was a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, as alleged by Washington.

“They openly confessed to killing 11 people,” Cabello said on state television. “Our investigations show the victims were not drug traffickers. A murder has been committed against a group of citizens using lethal force.”

The White House defended the strike, with spokeswoman Anna Kelly calling the victims “evil Tren de Aragua narcoterrorists” and saying that Nicolas Maduro is “not the legitimate president of Venezuela” and is a “fugitive.”

Several countries deny Maduro’s legitimacy as a democratically elected leader due to what some have viewed as unfair elections, but the Trump administration has not provided evidence linking the Venezuelan president to Tren de Aragua. US intelligence agencies have said there is no sign of coordination between the government and traffickers.

Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Venezuelan President Maduro announced the deployment of troops, police and civilian militias across 284 “battlefront” locations, reinforcing previous troop increases along the Colombian border.

Speaking from Ciudad Caribia, Maduro signalled Venezuela’s readiness to defend its water, saying: “We’re ready for an armed fight, if it’s necessary.”

The US has also expanded its military presence in the southern Caribbean, sending warships and deploying 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico.

Last month, Washington doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50m, citing alleged drug trafficking and criminal ties, a claim Venezuela denies, asserting it is not a drug-producing country.

US naval forces have unsettled some in South America who see them as a precursor to possible intervention in Venezuela.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has criticised the deployment of United States naval forces to the Caribbean, calling them a source of strain that could undermine peace in the region.

The South American leader expressed concern on Monday over the concentration of US forces, seen by some as a possible prelude to an attack on Venezuela.

“The presence of the armed forces of the largest power in the Caribbean Sea is a factor of tension,” Lula said during the opening of a virtual BRICS summit.

The US has said its military forces are in the region to counter drug trafficking. But the deployment has been paired with US threats against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom US President Donald Trump’s administration has accused of being closely linked with drug trafficking groups.

The Trump administration has provided no evidence for those claims and has often used vague allegations of connections to drug trafficking or criminal groups to justify extraordinary measures both at home and abroad.

Last week, the US carried out an unprecedented lethal attack on what the Trump administration said was a boat transporting drugs from Venezuela. Analysts have said the extrajudicial strike, which killed 11 people, was likely illegal, but US officials have promised to carry out more attacks in the region.

Maduro has said the deployment is part of an effort to depose his government and called on the military and civilians to make preparations for a possible attack.

BRICS meeting

As the Trump administration takes aggressive steps to advance its priorities on issues such as trade, immigration and drug trafficking, some countries are seeking to bolster ties with powers like China.

Addressing the virtual BRICS conference via video call on Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for more cooperation in areas such as technology, finance and trade, according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.

“The closer the BRICS countries cooperate, the more confidence, options and effective results they will have in addressing external risks and challenges,” he was quoted as saying.

Officials from India – a country, like Brazil and China, that has become a recent target of the Trump administration’s severe tariff policies – also called for greater collaboration.

“The world requires constructive and cooperative approaches to promote trade that is sustainable,” External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in comments published by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. “Increasing barriers and complicating transactions will not help. Neither would the linking of trade measures to nontrade matters.”

The virtual conference came a week after leaders from China, Russia, India and other Eurasian nations gathered in Tianjin, China, where they presented a vision of a new international order at a moment of widening rifts between partner nations and the US.

WASHINGTON — The F-35 is the most advanced fighter jet on the planet, capable of waging electronic warfare, of dropping nuclear weapons, of evading the surveillance and missile defenses of America’s most fearsome enemies at supersonic speeds.

Ten of them are being deployed by a newly branded War Department to Puerto Rico to combat drug traffickers in dinghies.

It is the latest example of the Trump administration using disproportionate military force to supplement, or substitute for, traditional law enforcement operations — first at home on the streets of U.S. cities and now overseas, where the president has labeled multiple drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and has vowed a “tough” response.

On Tuesday, that response began with an inaugural “kinetic strike” targeting a small vessel in the Caribbean allegedly carrying narcotics and 11 members of Tren de Aragua, one of the Venezuelan gangs President Trump has designated a terrorist group. Legally designating a gang or cartel as a terrorist entity ostensibly gives the president greater legal cover to conduct lethal strikes on targets.

The operation follows Trump’s deployment of U.S. forces to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., for operations with dubious justifications, as well as threats of similar actions in San Francisco, Chicago and New Orleans, moves that a federal judge said last week amount to Trump “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”

Trump has referred to both problems — urban crime and drug trafficking — as interlinked and out of control. But U.S. service members have no training in local law or drug enforcement. And experts question a strategy that has been tried before, both by the United States and regional governments, of launching a war against drugs only to drive leaders in the trade to militarize themselves.

U.S. drug policy “has always been semi-militarized,” said Jeremy Adelman, director of the Global History Lab at Princeton University. Trump’s latest actions simply make more explicit the erasure of a line “that separates law enforcement from warfare.”

“One side effect of all this is that other countries are watching,” Adelman said. “By turning law enforcement over to the military — as the White House is also doing domestically — what’s to stop other countries from doing the same in international waters?

“Fishermen in the South China Sea should be worried,” he added.

The Trump administration has not provided further details on the 11 people killed in the boat strike. But officials said the departure of a drug vessel from Venezuela makes Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s dictatorial president labeled by the White House as a top drug kingpin, indirectly responsible.

“Let there be no doubt, Nicolás Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker in the United States, and he’s a fugitive of American justice,” Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of State and national security advisor, said on a tour of the region Thursday, citing a grand jury indictment in the Southern District of New York.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a news conference Wednesday in Mexico City.

(Hector Vivas / Getty Images)

The president’s war on drug cartels will continue, Rubio said, adding that regional governments “will help us find these people and blow them up.”

Maduro has warned the strike indicates that Washington seeks regime change in Caracas. The Venezuelan military flew two aircraft near a U.S. vessel in international waters Thursday night, prompting an angry response from Pentagon officials and Trump to direct his Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to “do what you want to do” in response.

“Despite how dangerous this performance could be, because of its political consequences, it can’t be taken seriously as a drug policy,” said Lina Britto, an expert on Latin America and the Caribbean at Northwestern University with a focus on the history of the drug trade. “It lacks rigorousness in the analysis of how drug trafficking operates in the hemisphere.”

Most drugs entering the U.S. homeland from South America arrive in shipping containers, submarines and more efficient modes of transportation than speedboats — and primarily come through the Pacific, not the Caribbean, Britto said.

Trump has flirted with military strikes on drug cartels since the start of his second term, working with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to coordinate drone strikes over Mexican territory for surveillance of cartel activity.

But Sheinbaum has ruled out the use of force against cartels, or the deployment of U.S. forces within Mexico to combat them, warning that U.S. military action would violate Mexican sovereignty and upend collaboration between the two close-knit trade and security partners.

In comparison, Venezuela offers Trump a cleaner opportunity to test the use of force against drug cartels, with diplomatic ties between the two governments at a nadir. But a war with Maduro over drugs could create unexpected problems for the Trump administration, setting off a rare military conflict in a placid region and fueling further instability in a country that, over the last decade, already set off the world’s largest refugee crisis.

Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Trump’s use of foreign terrorist designations changes the rules of engagement in ways that allow for action “where law enforcement solutions failed in the past.”

“What we are witnessing is a paradigm shift in real time,” Berg said. “Many of Latin America’s most significant criminal organizations are now designated foreign terrorist organizations. The administration is demonstrating that this is not only rhetorical.”

But Paul Gootenberg, a professor at Stony Brook University and author of “Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug,” characterized Trump’s military operation as a “simplistic” approach to complex social problems.

“This is more a performative attack on the Venezuelan regime than a serious attempt at drug policy,” Gootenberg said.

“Militarized drug policy is nothing new — it was tried and intensified in various ways from the mid-1980s through 2000s, oftentimes under U.S. Southern Command,” he added. “The whole range and levels of ‘war on drugs’ was a long, unmitigated policy failure, according to the vast, vast majority of drug experts.”

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.

Sept. 2 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he ordered a “kinetic strike” on a boat carrying drugs from Venezuela to the United States that he said killed nearly a dozen members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Trump made the announcement in a social media post referring to members of the infamous Venezuelan gang as “narcoterrorists.” The strike marks the Trump administration’s embrace of military force against drug trafficking, which was previously left to law enforcement. It is also the latest ratcheting up of hostility with Venezuela after Trump said the gang is controlled by the country’s leader Nicolas Maduro.

The early morning strike killed 11 members of the gang while they were transporting illegal narcotics in international waters, according to Trump. U.S. military personnel were not harmed, he wrote.

“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America,” Trump wrote in his post.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the strike by U.S. military forces in a post on X, writing that it occurred in the southern Caribbean.

Shortly into his second term, Trump designated the Tren de Aragua and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gangs as “foreign terrorist organizations,” concluding that their drug trafficking and violent activities are a destabilizing presence.

The Trump administration in August doubled its bounty to $50 million for the arrest of Maduro, for the authoritarian ruler’s alleged role in drug trafficking.

Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, on Friday acknowledged in a press briefing that the United States was building up naval forces in the Caribbean, saying it was to “combat and dismantle drug trafficking organizations, criminal cartels and these foreign terrorist organizations in our hemisphere.”

Maduro responded by placing troops on the border and calling on Venezuelans to resist an invasion by the United States, saying during a press conference Monday that the county is “facing the greatest threat our continent has seen in 100 years,” reported El Pais.

“If Venezuela was attacked, we would declare an armed struggle and a Republic in arms,” Maduro said, according to the newspaper.