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WASHINGTON—The Pentagon plans to send the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, marking a major escalation of the Trump administration’s military campaign to target drug smugglers and threaten governments in Latin America. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which is currently deployed in the Mediterranean, to the Caribbean, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday, bringing dozens more fighter and surveillance aircraft, along with other Navy warships that accompany a carrier. The dispatch of a carrier is the strongest sign yet that President Trump is serious about striking targets on land in what his administration has said is an effort to destroy drug smuggling operations, according to two Navy officials. The last time the U.S. deployed a carrier was in late 2024 to the Red Sea to carry out months airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. “I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war, I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going kill them. You know? They’re going be like, dead,” Trump said Thursday at a White House event.
