The Trump administration is accumulating a massive U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, deploying warships, surveillance planes and fighter aircraft as it continues to blow up alleged drug-trafficking boats in the waters around South America. 

The main target for the flurry of activity appears to be Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the administration has called an “illegitimate leader.” The country’s attorney general said over the weekend there is “no doubt” that Trump wants to topple Maduro’s regime.

On Friday, the Department of Defense (DOD) ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its escort ships to head to the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) area of responsibility, significantly expanding the U.S. military presence there, which already counts around 10,000 U.S. forces supporting counternarcotics operations.

Earlier this month, Trump confirmed he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. The U.S. flew B-52 Stratofortress bombers near the coast of Venezuela. And last week, two Air Force B-1 bombers flew near Venezuela’s airspace.

“So I think that’s another example of the president trying to scare the pants off of Nicolás Maduro and his top generals in order to hopefully create … some sort of breaks within the regime, which might lead to a change that might be more favorable to an opening with the opposition,” said Christopher Hernandez-Roy, the deputy director and senior fellow of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He called the B-52 bombers that flew for hours off the Venezuelan coast an action meant “to intimidate” the country and it’s military. He said the U.S. “seems to be telegraphing some sort of imminent kinetic action inside Venezuela.”

“And while that has not yet taken place, it seems to be, it seems that the administration has been closer to that, but I think that they would prefer their pressure to lead to some sort of internal fissures within the government that might lead to a change of government without the U.S. actually having … to engage in military activities on the actual territory of Venezuela,” he said in an interview with The Hill last week.

Trump and his close allies have raised the prospects of the U.S. conducting land strikes in Venezuela as the White House has ramped up pressure against Maduro, accusing him of being the leader of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government and that traces its roots to Venezuela.

Over the weekend, Trump signaled land strikes could come soon. 

“We’re going to see with Venezuela. I can tell you one thing. We stopped all drugs from coming in by sea. I will stop all drugs from coming in by land very shortly. You’ll see that starting. They’re not going to want to do it. You’re going to see drugs stopping into our country,” the president told reporters Saturday.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said Trump promised to “take on” the drug cartels while campaigning during the 2024 election and that he has “taken unprecedented action to stop the scourge of narcoterrorism that has resulted in the needless deaths of innocent Americans.”

“All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores, and the President will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country,” Kelly said in a statement to The Hill on Monday. 

Maduro accused the administration on Friday of “fabricating” a war against him after the Pentagon ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier with more than 4,500 sailors, to sail to Southcom after being docked in the Adriatic Sea. It carries a squadron of F/A-18 Super Hornets and helicopter squadrons.

DOD did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment. 

The president initially said last week the administration may go to Congress for authorization to strike drug cartels that are smuggling on land. But a day later, he dismissed the need to ask Capitol Hill lawmakers for a declaration of war for attacks against alleged cartel boats, operations that have raised questions among senators in both parties and have taken place off the coast of Venezuela and in the east Pacific Ocean.

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

Experts say the U.S. military, if given the green light, could target drug cartel infrastructure such as port facilities and warehouses where drug traffickers store cocaine before it is dispatched elsewhere.

“Any of that could be struck and could be struck in a number of different ways. It could be done by soft type of raid — can be done with an airstrike. There are a lot of different ways that could occur,” said Dr. Bradley Martin, a senior policy researcher at RAND who retired from the Navy as a surface warfare captain. 

The U.S. would not go after drug labs, Hernandez-Roy said, because most of that cocaine is made in Colombia. He added that if land attacks take place, they will likely reveal the “true” intentions of the U.S. government, whether the administration is combating drug trafficking or trying to force regime change in Venezuela.

“Now, the efforts so far to force regime change have been just to apply pressure and scare the pants off them, but if they then start going after targets inside Venezuela, then that’s a whole different ballgame,” he said. 

Tarek William Saab, the Venezuelan attorney general and close ally of Maduro, told BBC’s “Newshour” program on Sunday that Trump is trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Saab said a land invasion of Venezuela should not happen, but that Caracas is “prepared.” The attorney general added that Venezuela is “still ready to resume dialogue” with the U.S., even though Trump cut off diplomacy with Caracas in early October. 

Geoff Ramsey, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Maduro’s regime is still intact and that the U.S. is nearing a crossroads.

“I think there’s really been no indication of any kind of cracks in the regime or any kind of high-profile defections, and so I think we’re getting to a point where the U.S. has to decide whether to escalate to military strikes inside Venezuela, or whether to declare victory and move on,” Ramsey said in an interview with The Hill last week. 

On Sunday, the USS Gravely, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, docked at Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, to conduct joint military training exercises with the Caribbean country and is set to stay there until Thursday.

And the massive USS Gerald R. Ford is one of 11 U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, meaning it represents less than 10 percent of carrier strike groups, a naval formation that revolves around an aircraft carrier, according to Martin, the researcher at RAND. He added that even with “escort destroyers, we’re not at 15 percent” of the U.S. fleet being deployed in the region.

“The forces being brought into Southcom are specifically for power projection, so whether or not there’s an intention, there is significant capability,” he told The Hill.

In an effort to continue showing air dominance, multiple B-1B Lancer bombers flew near Venezuela on Monday, according to flight-tracking data reviewed by The Hill. 

The DOD also has deployed three Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers: the USS Stockdale, USS Gravely and USS Jason Dunham in Southcom, along with the USS Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser.

More than 4,500 Marines and sailors are in the Caribbean as part of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, a task force comprised of the USS Iwo Jima, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship; USS Fort Lauderdale; and USS San Antonio.

The MV Ocean Trader, a civilian ship that is converted for special operations missions, is also deployed to the Caribbean and can support various activities, including intelligence collection. 

The naval forces could stay in the region for a “very long” time because they are on a normal deployment cycle, although overloading one region could leave other parts of the world undercovered. 

“But that’s not an immediate thing. That’s something that takes a while to become an issue,” Martin said.

Ramsey, the senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said there are too many U.S. military assets in or traveling to the Caribbean to dismiss the campaign as “empty saber-rattling.” He said the likelihood of Washington ordering strikes inside Venezuela has gone up.

“The million-dollar question here is what the administration actually wants to achieve with missile strikes. It’s a bad time to be posted in a guerrilla encampment in western Táchira, or to be running a clandestine airstrip along the Colombian border in Zulia state,” Ramsey said, referring to two of the 23 states in Venezuela.

“But the jury’s still out on whether the U.S. will target Maduro and his inner circle. Given that there is no evidence that decapitation strikes would lead to a clean transition, I tend to think the administration is still trying to avoid a Libya-style meltdown,” he added.