Daijiworld Media Network - Washington
Washington, Oct 25: The United States has ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, along with its embarked carrier air wing, to deploy to the US Southern Command’s area of responsibility, the Pentagon announced on Friday.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed the move on social media, stating that the deployment follows President Donald Trump’s directive to dismantle Transnational Criminal Organisations (TCOs) and counter narco-terrorism as part of efforts to defend the homeland.
“These forces will strengthen and expand our capabilities to disrupt drug trafficking networks and dismantle TCOs,” Parnell said in a post on X.
The Southern Command’s jurisdiction covers Latin America south of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the adjacent waters of Central and South America.
According to regional observers, the deployment marks a major escalation in Washington’s anti-narcotics strategy — shifting focus from intercepting small vessels at sea to potentially targeting cartel operations on land across Latin America, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Citing the Wall Street Journal, the report noted that this represents the largest US military buildup in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama.
Earlier on Friday, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth announced that US forces sank a suspected drug-smuggling vessel in the Caribbean’s international waters overnight, killing all six people on board. It marked the first nighttime strike against a suspected narcotics vessel and the 10th such operation since September, bringing the total death toll from these missions to over 40.
In a memo to Congress on October 2, the Trump administration formally stated that the US is engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels designated as terrorist organisations, declaring that cartel members would be treated as “unlawful combatants.”
The aggressive new campaign has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats in Congress.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemned the actions, saying the administration had offered “no credible legal justification, evidence, or intelligence” for the strikes.
The operation has also sparked international backlash.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Washington of using cartel threats as a pretext for regime change and expanding its military footprint in the region.
Meanwhile, Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounced the US actions as “murder,” referring to the deaths of suspected traffickers at sea.
As the Gerald R. Ford Strike Group steams south, tensions are rising across the hemisphere, with critics warning that Washington’s anti-cartel offensive risks blurring the line between counterterrorism and warfare in Latin America.