US Deploys Gerald Ford Carrier Strike Group To Target Cartels

The Pentagon has authorized the deployment of a carrier strike group to combat transnational cartel activity, marking a significant escalation in a pressure campaign against Venezuela, the Pentagon announced Friday.

The Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group will be deployed to the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) area of responsibility (AOR) with an air wing, the Pentagon told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. The move is the latest effort to increase military presence around South America in order to combat cartel operations and pressure regimes like Colombia and Venezuela.

It is unclear whether the forces will be deployed in the Caribbean Sea or the Pacific Ocean, both of which are in the SOUTHCOM AOR.

“The enhanced U.S. force presence in the USSOUTHCOM AOR will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere,” the Pentagon said in its statement. “These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs.”

Drug smugglers have increasingly resorted to underhanded tactics to avoid detection by U.S. forces, including smuggling their product aboard commercial vessels, dropping drug bales at sea via illegal flights and shipping product in smaller quantities.

The Trump administration initially deployed naval assets to the southern Caribbean in August after designating Latin American cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Additionally, multiple bombers have flown patrols around Venezuelan airspace as a “show of force.”

Many observers have speculated that Trump’s pressure on Venezuela may open up the U.S. to a regime-change conflict in the nation. Colombia has also come under Trump’s ire, with the Treasury Department issuing sanctions Friday against Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who on Tuesday suggested it’s time to “get rid” of Trump.