The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, would not say how long it would take for the strike group to arrive in the waters off South America or if all five destroyers would make the journey.
There are already more than 6,000 sailors and Marines on eight warships in the region. If the entire USS Ford strike group arrives, that could bring nearly 4,500 more sailors as well as the nine squadrons of aircraft assigned to the carrier.
“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in his post. “Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”
Maduro argues that the U.S. 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 2,000 kilometers (about 1,200 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.”
When reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would request that Congress issue a declaration of war against the cartels, he said that wasn’t the plan.
“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be like, dead,” Trump said during a roundtable at the White House.
Lawmakers from both major political parties have expressed concerns about Trump ordering the military actions without receiving authorization from Congress or providing many details.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who previously worked in the Pentagon and the State Department, including as an adviser in Afghanistan.
“We have no idea how far this is going, how this could potentially bring in, you know, is it going to be boots on the ground? Is it going to be escalatory in a way where we could see us get bogged down for a long time?” he said.
Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who has long been involved in foreign affairs in the hemisphere, said of Trump’s approach: “It’s about time.”
While Trump “obviously hates war,” he also is not afraid to use the U.S. military in targeted operations, Diaz-Balart said. “I would not want to be in the shoes of any of these narco-cartels.”
