Madrid November 11 (Europe Press) –
President Donald Trump’s administration announced on Tuesday that it has deployed an aircraft carrier to Latin America as tensions with Venezuela escalate due to a U.S. military operation over drug trafficking in the region. In the region, dozens of people have been killed in bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific waters.
The US Navy said in a statement that the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford entered Southcom’s area of responsibility on November 11 after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the ship to “support President Trump’s directives” to “dismantle transnational criminal organizations and combat narco-terrorism.”
“Increasing the presence of U.S. forces in SOUTHCOM’s areas of responsibility will strengthen the United States’ ability to detect, monitor, and deter illicit activities and actors that undermine the security and prosperity of the United States and the security of the Western Hemisphere,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.
For the U.S. government, the deployment of this force, which includes 4,000 uniformed personnel and dozens of aircraft, “improves and strengthens existing capabilities to combat drug trafficking and weaken and dismantle transnational criminal organizations,” it said, adding that it “provides a greater ability to project power through sustained operations at sea.”
In this sense, he explained, the USS Gerald R. Ford is “capable of simultaneously catapulting and recovering fixed-wing aircraft on its flight deck in support of designated operations, day or night.” It would therefore “strengthen” joint forces already deployed in the region to “defeat and dismantle criminal networks that exploit our nation’s borders and shared maritime territory.”
In early September, the United States launched attacks on these alleged drug-trafficking vessels transiting the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, and have since sunk 20 vessels and killed 75 people.
The governments of Venezuela and Colombia, as well as the United Nations, condemned the acts as extrajudicial killings, noting that the victims would primarily be fishermen. Caracas is concerned about the possibility of U.S. military intervention, and Bogotá is also warning of that extreme situation.
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