The Department of Defense is sending the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier and a strike group to the Caribbean, an escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to target suspected drug-smuggling vessels.
The enhanced U.S. presence “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.
Mr. Parnell said the move, ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, will “enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking” and “degrade and dismantle” transnational criminal organizations.
The Ford carrier — considered the largest, and one of the most advanced, warships ever built — is currently deployed in the Mediterranean. It has multiple destroyers in its strike group.
The action comes as the U.S. ordered an overnight strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean that killed six, bringing the total number of vessels hit to 10.
This is a major advancement of the Trump administration’s campaign against drug trafficking and transnational criminal networks since beginning strikes in September.
The attacks and an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela have raised speculation that the administration could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces charges of narco-terrorism in the U.S.
In the latest move, the U.S. military flew a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday.
The Trump administration maintains that it’s combating drug trafficking into the United States, but Maduro argues that the operations are the latest effort to force him out of office.
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
• Mary McCue Bell can be reached at mbell@washingtontimes.com.
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