Venezuela

US President Donald J. Trump’s condemnation of Venezuela’s illegal leader Nicolás Maduro includes his regime’s facilitation of trafficking illegal drugs into the United States. The leader of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corrina Machado, has accused Maduro of being chief of a criminal narcotics organization, Cartel de los Soles (“Cartel of the Suns”). US military forces have destroyed several speedboats laden with cocaine and other illegal drugs leaving Venezuelan ports.

This month, as President Trump travelled to his Mar-a-Lago estate, he told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had “sort of” made up his mind about whether to launch US military strikes on Venezuela. “I can’t tell you what it would be,” he added.

Publicly the president has been keeping his options open. But behind the scenes, some of the most powerful people around him have been trying to persuade him to attack Venezuela — and remove its president, Nicolás Maduro — in what would be an extraordinary escalation of months-long military build-up in the Caribbean.

Those in favour of the strikes say they could bring democracy and prosperity to Venezuela and provide a way for the eight million people who have fled the country in the past ten years to return. These include hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who came to the US and who the Trump administration would like to deport from the country.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that airlines and pilots should consider the airspace over Venezuela to be shut down.

The United States has designated the Cartel de los Soles (Spanish for Cartel of the Suns) – a group it alleges is headed by Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and senior figures in his government – as a foreign terrorist organisation.

Labelling an organisation as a terrorist group gives US law enforcement and military agencies broader powers to target and dismantle it.

In recent months, the US has been ramping up pressure on Maduro, saying his government is illegitimate following last year’s election, which was widely dismissed as rigged. The designation gives it another way to turn up the heat.

The Trump administration is rapidly escalating its pressure campaign against Venezuela, with America’s largest aircraft carrier, the Ford, about to take up a position within striking distance of the country, even as President Trump’s aides provide conflicting accounts of what, exactly, they are seeking to achieve.

Mr. Trump held back-to-back days of meetings at the White House over the past two days, reviewing military options, including the use of Special Operations forces and direct action inside Venezuela.

It is still not clear whether Mr. Trump has made a decision about what kind of action to authorize, if any. On Friday, he told reporters on Air Force One that “I sort of made up my mind.” “I can’t tell you what it is,” he said, “but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in.”

The drone circled high above the Caribbean Sea as its target skipped across the waves below carrying another bounty of drugs bound for America.

A sudden flash and the boat was engulfed in flames, its cargo disintegrated and its 11 crew dead.

Donald Trump had just fired the opening shot of a new campaign against “terrorist” cartels in Latin America. The strike, he declared, was “only the beginning”.

If you know somebody who lost their job over something they said about Charlie Kirk Venezuelan Narco boats need captains pic.twitter.com/2iH1bDG6X3

— “Dark30Arts” Jess & Nick (@Dark30Arts) October 22, 2025

Donald Trump has deployed one of the Army’s most secretive regiments in the Caribbean after threatening strikes inside Venezuela.

The president warned socialist tyrant Nicolas Maduro that he better not ‘f*** around with the United States’ as he spoke to reporters at the White House on Friday.

Trump has ordered five strikes over the last two months on Venezuelan ‘narco-terrorist’ boats in the Caribbean, killing at least 27 alleged drug traffickers.

US President Donald Trump has confirmed a report he authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, provoking outrage from the South American nation’s leader.

US forces have already conducted at least five strikes on suspected drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean in recent weeks, killing 27 people. UN-appointed human rights experts have described the raids as “extrajudicial executions”.

Speaking at the White House, Trump said the US “is looking at land” as it considers further strikes on drug cartels in the region.

President Trump destroyed another boat full of narco terrorists. pic.twitter.com/YqwDxE4ih9

— RebelwithoutaReason (@RebelwoaReason) October 14, 2025

The mayor of Caracas had come to one of her city’s busiest tube stations wearing a camouflage T-shirt declaring herself a card-carrying combatant – and with a message to match.

“They think they’re the owners of the world,” Carmen Meléndez complained of the Trump administration and its pressure campaign against Venezuela’s government. “But if they dare [to invade] we’ll be waiting for them here.”

Meléndez said she hoped a US invasion was not on the horizon, even though they had shown themselves to be “a bunch of crazies, who are capable of anything”. “But if it does happen we are ready,” she added, “and we will use all of the weapons we have to defend the homeland.”

WASHINGTON — The US military killed four alleged “narco-terrorists” in the latest strike on a boat deemed to be trafficking drugs off the coast of Venezuela, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Friday.

The operation targeted a “vessel affiliated with designated terrorist organizations,” killing four men who were “transporting substantial amounts of narcotics headed to America to poison our people,” Hegseth wrote on X.

BREAKING: Drug boat heading to the US from Venezuela just blown up by the US military. 4 smugglers kiIIed. pic.twitter.com/BpiVuszYB8

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 3, 2025

When Edith Perales was younger, he enlisted in the National Bolivarian Militia, a civilian force created by the late President Hugo Chávez in 2009 to help defend Venezuela.

“We have to be a country capable of defending every last inch of our territory so no one comes to mess with us,” Chávez said at the time.

Sixteen years on, Perales, who is now 68, is joining thousands of other militia members getting ready for a potential US attack.

At the Doral Park Country Club outside Miami, fevered machinations are under way to overthrow a dictator. For years, in this palm-lined enclave, Venezuelan exiles have schemed to pressure US politicians to bring down Nicolás Maduro, convinced history would one day turn in their favour.

Now they believe it has. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who is the son of Cuban immigrants, has worked to convince President Trump that Maduro is not only a socialist dictator, but a “narco-terrorist” out to destroy the United States with boat-loads of fentanyl-laced cocaine weaponised to poison American children.