US is sending an aircraft carrier to Latin America in major escalation of military buildup

By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the U.S. military is deploying an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region.

The U.S. military has conducted its 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, Hegseth said earlier Friday, blaming the Tren de Aragua gang for operating the vessel and leaving six people dead in the Caribbean Sea.

In a social media post, Hegseth said the strike occurred overnight, and it marks the second time the Trump administration has tied one of its operations to the gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison.

The pace of the strikes has quickened in recent days from one every few weeks when they first began to three this week, killing a total of at least 43 people since September. Two of the most recent strikes were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area where the military has launched attacks and shifting to where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.

In a 20-second black and white video of the strike posted to social media, a small boat can be seen apparently sitting motionless on the water when a long thin projectile descends, triggering an explosion. The video ends before the blast dies down enough for the remains of the boat to be seen again.

Hegseth said the strike happened in international waters and boasted that it was the first one conducted at night.

“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in the post. “Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”

US focus on Venezuela and Tren de Aragua

The strike drew parallels to the first announced by the U.S. last month by focusing on Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization and blamed for being at the root of the violence and drug dealing that plague some cities.

While not mentioning the origin of the latest boat, the Republican administration says at least four of the boats it has hit have come from Venezuela.

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 narcoterrorism 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.

Maduro on Thursday praised security forces and a civilian militia for defense exercises along some 1,243 miles of coastline to prepare for the possibility of a U.S. attack.

In the span of six hours, “100% of all the country’s coastline was covered in real time, with all the equipment and heavy weapons to defend all of Venezuela’s coasts if necessary,” Maduro said during a government event shown on state television.

The U.S. military’s presence is less about drugs than sending a message to countries in the region to align with U.S. interests, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region.

“An expression that I’m hearing a lot is ‘Drugs are the excuse.’ And everyone knows that,” Dickinson said. “And I think that message is very clear in regional capitals. So the messaging here is that the U.S. is intent on pursuing specific objectives. And it will use military force against leaders and countries that don’t fall in line.”