Hegseth, Caine visit Puerto Rico amid Venezuela tensions

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Puerto Rico on Monday as the U.S. steps up its military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean in the aftermath of the U.S. strike on a vessel off Venezuela’s coast. 

The Trump administration has indicated more military strikes on drug targets could be coming, saying it is seeking to “wage war” on Latin American cartels it accuses of flooding the U.S. with cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs. It is facing mounting questions, however, about the legality of the strike and any such escalation, which upends decades of procedures for interdicting suspected drug vessels.

The military’s seniormost leaders arrived in the U.S. territory more than a week after ships carrying hundreds of U.S. Marines deployed to Puerto Rico for a training exercise, a move that some on the island have criticized.

Puerto Rico’s Gov. Jenniffer González said Hegseth and Caine visited on behalf of President Donald Trump’s administration to support those participating in the training.

“We thank President Trump and his administration for recognizing the strategic importance of Puerto Rico to U.S. national security and for their fight against drug cartels and the narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro,” González said.

Hegseth and Caine met with officials at the 156th Wing Muñiz Air National Guard Base in Carolina, a city just east of the capital of San Juan.

González said Hegseth spoke to nearly 300 soldiers at the base and thanked those he described as “American warriors” for their work. It wasn’t immediately clear how long they planned to stay in Puerto Rico, or if they planned to visit other sites while on the island.

The visit comes as the U.S. prepares to deploy 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for operations targeting drug cartels, a person familiar with the planning said Saturday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because information about the deployments has not been made public.

Siul López, a spokesman for Puerto Rico’s National Guard, told The Associated Press that a group of Marines training on the island is not tied to the U.S. maritime force recently deployed to Caribbean waters. The U.S. Marine Corps also issued a statement on Aug. 31 noting that Marines and sailors from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit would be conducting amphibious training and flight operations in southern Puerto Rico.

“One thing has nothing to do with another,” López said, adding that the training in Puerto Rico was pre-planned.

The ongoing training of the Marines in Puerto Rico and the upcoming deployment of fighter jets have rankled some in the U.S. territory, where the memories of the U.S. Navy using nearby islands as training ranges for decades remains fresh, with the cleanup still ongoing.

The April 1999 death of civilian security guard David Sanes Rodríguez sparked large protests at the time, eventually leading to the U.S. military leaving the island. Rodríguez was killed after two 500-pound bombs were dropped near him as part of a training mission in Vieques.

On Sunday, dozens of people gathered at the National Guard base in Carolina to decry the heightened U.S. military presence on the island.

They held signs that said, “No to War” and “No to military bases in P.R.”

Tensions escalating

On Sept. 2, Trump announced that the U.S. carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a vessel that had left Venezuela and was suspected of carrying drugs. Eleven people were killed in the rare U.S. military operation in the Caribbean, with the president saying the vessel was operated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

While the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago praised the strike and said the U.S. should kill all drug traffickers “violently,” reaction from other Caribbean leaders has been more subdued.

Barbadian Foreign Minister Kerrie Symmonds recently told The Associated Press that members of Caricom, a regional trade bloc, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking for an open line of communication on developments. He said they want to avoid being surprised by any U.S. moves against Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government on Monday insisted that the U.S. is falsely accusing it of playing a crucial role in the global drug trade. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez told reporters the U.S. government should redirect its recently deployed maritime force to the Pacific, where fast boats and container ships have long carried Colombian cocaine.

“Those ships that are trying to intimidate Venezuela today should be there in the Pacific if they truly wanted to fight and prevent cocaine from reaching the United States of America,” she said. “They have a GPS location problem. They’re where they shouldn’t be. They need to calibrate their GPS.”

Rodríguez, citing reports from the United Nations and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, added that Venezuela “has absolutely nothing to do with the deaths of (U.S.) citizens from drug overdoses” as the country “is not relevant” in global drug production.

She suggested the U.S. should focus on fighting consumption within its borders.

“There’s a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of double standards, a lot of political manipulation of this issue to attack, to intervene, to aim for regime change in countries that aren’t sympathetic,” she said, referring to drug trafficking.

Citing self-defense and an ‘immediate threat’

Rubio asserted while visiting Latin America last week that drug cartels “pose an immediate threat to the United States” and that Trump “has a right, under exigent circumstances, to eliminate imminent threats to the United States.”

Warning operations like the strike “will happen again,” Rubio said Trump “wants to wage war on these groups because they’ve been waging war on us for 30 years and no one has responded.”

A U.S. official familiar with the reasoning also cited self-defense as legal justification for the strike that the administration says killed 11 members of Tren de Aragua, which has been dubbed a foreign terrorist organization. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.

The administration used a similar argument months prior to justify an intense bombing camping against Houthi rebels in Yemen. However, behind the scenes, the justification for strikes against the cartels appears to be far more complex.

The New York Times reported last month that Trump signed a directive to the Pentagon to start using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels. That reporting was related to the Venezuela strike, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.

Touting the strike, but no details on how it happened

Vice President JD Vance celebrated the strike over the weekend, suggesting that the use of force is necessary to protect American families from deadly drugs.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance said on X.

Several Democrats and even some fellow Republicans criticized Vance’s comments. Congressional leaders also have pressed for more information on why the administration took the military action.

“JD ‘I don’t give a s—‘ Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the ‘highest and best use of the military,’” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican, wrote in response to Vance. “Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

The Pentagon has been silent about any details on the strike. Military officials have not divulged what service carried it out, what weapons were used or how it was determined that the vessel was operated by Tren de Aragua or carrying drugs.

Pentagon officials did not respond to direct questions about the legal justification for the strike and whether the military considered itself at war with Maduro’s government.

‘There’s no authority for this whatsoever’

Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania, said “extrajudicial killing” would be a better term to describe the strike. She sees it as an outgrowth of the two-decade blurring of the lines between law enforcement and armed conflict.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. started designating members of foreign terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaida and the Taliban, as unlawful combatants, making them vulnerable to U.S. attacks even when not directly engaged in warfare.

Trump has designated several Latin American cartels, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. But that in itself does not make a U.S. strike against suspected members of the group legal, Finkelstein said. Congress has not authorized the use of force against Venezuela nor are there any U.N. resolutions that would justify the U.S. actions.

“There’s no authority for this whatsoever under international law,” she said. “It was not an act of self-defense. It was not in the middle of a war. There was no imminent threat to the United States.”

A pair of armed Venezuelan planes flew by a U.S. warship in the Caribbean days after the strike, and Trump warned Friday that any future flights would be met with gunfire.

The strike “quite arguably is an act of war against Venezuela and they would potentially be justified in responding with the use of force,” Finkelstein said. “Could you imagine what would happen if their navy was 12 miles off the coast of the U.S.?“