In a dramatic escalation of America’s war on drug cartels, President Donald Trump has deployed an array of military might to the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, targeting suspected narcotics traffickers with tactics reminiscent of the post-9/11 war on terror. The operation, which began in September 2025, has already resulted in the destruction of several boats and the deaths of dozens of alleged cartel members, and now appears poised to expand even further—potentially onto Venezuelan soil.
At the heart of this campaign is a formidable U.S. military presence. According to NPR and McClatchy, the deployment includes warships, surveillance aircraft, amphibious assault vessels, and even a nuclear-powered submarine, all stationed off the coast of Venezuela. In Puerto Rico, ten Lockheed Martin F-35B fighter jets have taken up residence at José Aponte de la Torre Airport in Ceiba. U.S. Marines have conducted joint exercises on the island, and both Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Daniel Caine have made high-profile visits, underscoring the seriousness of Washington’s intentions.
President Trump has made no secret of his administration’s willingness to use military force against what he calls “narco-terrorists.” At a recent White House briefing, he told reporters, “Now we’ll look at cartels. We’re going to look very seriously at cartels coming by land.” Trump claimed that since the U.S. began targeting drug-trafficking boats, “we have absolutely no drugs entering our country by water, because they were lethal.” He doubled down on the administration’s rationale for the strikes, stating, “We have proof. All you have to do is look at the cargo, it’s spattered all over the ocean. Big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”
The Trump administration’s approach has borrowed heavily from the blueprint of military strikes used in the global war on terror that followed the September 11 attacks. FBI Director Kash Patel, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised the decision to label drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, arguing, “We must treat them like the al-Qaidas of the world because that’s how they’re operating.” Patel added, “In order to destroy them, and that’s the key—eliminate the drug trade and destroy the pouring into the country of narcotics—we have to use authorities at the Department of War and the intelligence community to go after the threat like we did terrorists when we were manhunting them.”
So far, the administration has conducted at least three lethal strikes against suspected drug supplier boats in the Caribbean Sea. The first strike, which reportedly killed 11 suspected members of the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua, was followed by further attacks that destroyed four vessels and left 17 people dead, according to the Pentagon. Trump has asserted that the evidence for these actions is clear, citing visible cargo—cocaine and fentanyl—spilled into the ocean as proof the boats were carrying narcotics.
Yet the campaign has not gone unchallenged. Experts and some lawmakers have condemned the strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings. Luca Trenta, a professor at Swansea University who studies U.S. foreign policy and covert action, told NPR, “It’s a really bad thing if the president of the United States could decide that a group of civilians that might pose some kind of distant threat could be killed without any form of due process because who is to say what group will be targeted next?” Trenta also pointed out that, unlike the war on terror, the targets in these strikes do not pose an imminent threat to the United States.
There are also practical questions about the effectiveness of such lethal force. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, explained to NPR that the U.S. has long interdicted suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean, but those operations focused on arrests and intelligence gathering. “The thing that’s different now is not that there is interdiction, but that the interdiction seeks to kill people, not apprehend them,” she said. Felbab-Brown is skeptical that these strikes will stop the flow of narcotics or deter people from joining trafficking organizations. “They face a tremendous amount of risk already,” she noted, including arrest, imprisonment, and the chance of death at sea. She also warned that losing the intelligence gained from arrests is a “real downside” of the lethal approach.
Daniel Byman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies echoed these concerns, telling NPR that during the war on terror, lethal strikes were considered a last resort—arresting suspects allowed authorities to gather intelligence and disrupt future plots. “You could try to arrest the group and try to get information—but it seems that killing them, rather than being the last resort, was the first resort,” Byman observed of the current anti-cartel campaign.
On the ground in Venezuela, the response has been swift and defiant. President Nicolás Maduro, who has long been accused by Washington of leading the so-called Cartel of the Suns—a shadowy network allegedly embedded within Venezuela’s military and intelligence services—categorically denied the drug trafficking allegations. In response to what he described as U.S. threats of an “imperialist invasion,” Maduro signed a decree activating a state of emergency on September 29, 2025. Under Article 338 of Venezuela’s constitution, this measure allows the government to temporarily suspend certain constitutional guarantees for up to 90 days, extendable once. “Our goal is to ensure that the entire nation, every citizen, has the support and protection of all the forces of Venezuelan society to respond to any threat or attack against our country,” Maduro declared in a televised address.
Venezuelan officials have condemned the U.S. military buildup as a destabilizing threat to the region. The Trump administration, however, insists that its mission is focused solely on drug interdiction. High-profile visits by U.S. defense officials and joint exercises with Marines in Puerto Rico have underscored the readiness of American forces. The amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima, two San Antonio-class transport ships, a cruiser, several destroyers, and a Los Angeles-class attack submarine with more than 400 missile tubes are all part of the deployment, supporting over 4,500 Marines and sailors trained for rapid-response operations.
As for what comes next, the Trump administration is reportedly reviewing plans for targeted drone strikes on cartel figures and clandestine drug labs inside Venezuela, with potential actions possibly starting within weeks, according to NBC News. While no final decision has been made, the possibility of broader military intervention looms large, raising the stakes in an already volatile region.
Critics warn that such bold military actions could push criminal groups to shift to land-based smuggling routes, increasing violence and sparking turf wars—as has happened before in Latin America. There’s also the risk of civilian casualties and a nationalist backlash against perceived U.S. aggression, a point Byman underscored: “No country likes being bombed, and U.S. strikes could trigger a national backlash.”
Whether this new “war on cartels” will yield the results the Trump administration hopes for remains to be seen. For now, the Caribbean is bristling with American firepower, and the world is watching to see just how far Washington is willing to go.