US deployment in Caribbean ‘not training’, says defence chief Hegseth

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has told US Marines on board a warship stationed in Puerto Rico that their deployment to the Caribbean was “not training” in the latest sign that Washington intends to escalate its aggressive posture in the region.

Hegseth visited troops on the USS Iwo Jima warship on Monday, where, in reference to the administration’s push to curtail drug trade into the US, he said: “What you’re doing right now is not training; this is a real-world exercise on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America to end the poisoning of the American people.”

Hegseth, whose department was recently renamed by Trump from the Department of Defense to the Department of War, paid a surprise visit to the warship alongside Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a post on X, Jenniffer Gonzalez, Puerto Rico’s governor, welcomed Hegseth and Caine and thanked Trump for “recognizing the strategic value Puerto Rico has to the national security of the United States and the fight against drug cartels in our hemisphere, perpetuated by narco-dictator Nicolas Maduro”, the president of Venezuela.

Tensions with Venezuela have seen a sharp escalation after the US sank a boat from the country in the Caribbean, killing 11 people, which President Donald Trump claimed was carrying illegal narcotics.

In a post on Truth Social after the strike, Trump said, “Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”

The action has been condemned by rights groups as an “unlawful extrajudicial killing”, and has inflamed already roiled relations between Washington and Caracas.

Members of the US Congress criticised the decision, asking what the legal basis of the strike was. Adam Smith, the most senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said: “There is no way on God’s green earth you can say that whatever was in this boat presented any sort of imminent threat to the United States in a military sense of the word.”

Rand Paul, a Republican senator who sits on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, slammed Vice President JD Vance, who defended the strike in a post on X, saying: “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Venezuela of trafficking illegal drugs to the US, but has not presented evidence for its claims. Venezuela’s Maduro, who has historically had fraught ties with the US, has denied the allegations.

“How can there be a drug cartel if there’s no drugs here?” said Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez on Monday.

Trump has adopted a more stridently aggressive posture against Caracas since coming to power earlier this year, evoking his term in the White House when the administration heavily backed an opposition leader and was on the cusp of effectively supporting a coup.

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long advocated for the US to adopt a more confrontational relationship with Venezuela, refused to rule out the possibility of strikes against drug cartels inside Venezuela, even as Trump ruled out the possibility of regime change.

“We are going to take on drug cartels wherever they are, wherever they are operating against the interests of the US,” Rubio said.

The US has reportedly deployed 10 F-35 stealth jets to Puerto Rico as part of operations against Latin American drug cartels.

Trump also warned that the US would shoot down Venezuelan jets flying too close to US ships, following reports in US media of two such incidents.

Last week, Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar welcomed the increased US deployment in the region and praised the strike against the vessel allegedly carrying drugs. “The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently,” Persad-Bissessar said.

However, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed alarm about the US naval build-up during a virtual speech at the BRICS summit on Monday, saying: “The presence of the armed forces of the largest power in the Caribbean Sea is a factor of tension.”