Drug crackdowns or regime change

For two months, the US military has been building a force of warships, fighter jets, bombers, marines, drones and spy planes in the Caribbean. It is the largest deployment there in decades.

Long-range bombers, B-52s, performed “bomb attack demonstrations” off the coast of Venezuela. Trump authorized the deployment of the CIA to Venezuela and the world’s largest aircraft carrier is being sent to the region.

The US says it has killed dozens of people in strikes on small vessels from Venezuela it says are carrying “narcotics” and “narco-terrorists”, without providing evidence or details about those on board.

The strikes drew condemnation in the region and experts questioned their legality. They are being marketed by the US as a war on drug trafficking, but all signs indicate that this is really a campaign of intimidation that seeks to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power.

“It’s about regime change. They probably won’t invade, the hope is that it’s about signaling,” said Dr Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at the Chatham House think tank.

He argued that the military build-up was a show of force aimed at “striking fear” into the hearts of the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s inner circle so that they would turn against him.

BBC Verify is looking at publicly available tracking information from US ships and aircraft in the region – along with satellite and social media images – to try to build a picture of where Trump’s forces are.

The implementation is changing, so we regularly monitor the region for updates.

As of October 23, we have identified 10 U.S. warships in the region, including guided-missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and offshore oil tankers.

It’s no secret that the US administration, especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would like to see Maduro ousted.

Earlier this year, he told Fox News that Maduro was a “terrible dictator,” and when asked if he was pushing for Maduro to leave, added, “We’re going to work on that policy.”

But even Maduro’s outspoken critics like Rubio have found it difficult to explicitly call for military-backed regime change, something members of the Venezuelan opposition have long called for.

Donald Trump campaigned against regime change in 2016, pledging to “stop the race to topple foreign regimes” and recently condemned engaging in “perpetual wars”.

The US does not recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s president after the latest elections in 2024 were widely rejected internationally and by the Venezuelan opposition as neither free nor fair. The US Embassy in Caracas was closed during Trump’s first presidency in 2019.

The US has increased its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, an incentive for people in his loyal inner circle to turn him in. But this did not lead to desertion.

Venezuelan law professor and senior fellow at national security think tank CSIS Jose Ignacio Hernandez says $50 million is “nothing” to Venezuela’s elite.

A lot of money can be made through corruption in an oil-rich country like Venezuela. Former Treasury chief Alejandro Andrade earned $1 billion in bribes before he was convicted.

Many analysts agree that the Venezuelan military would be key to any regime change, but to turn on Maduro and oust him, they will likely also want promises of immunity from prosecution.

Mr. Hernandez adds: “They will think that in one way or another I am also involved in criminal activities.”

Michael Albertus, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who has published extensively on Latin America, is not convinced that even a $500 million reward would convince Maduro’s inner circle to betray him.

“Authoritarian leaders are always suspicious even of their inner circle and therefore create mechanisms to monitor them and ensure their loyalty,” he said.

Economic sanctions against Venezuela have exacerbated an already severe economic crisis, but have failed to persuade senior figures to turn against their president.

Donald Trump has declared a war on drug traffickers and said one ship struck by the US on October 16 was “mostly laden with fentanyl”.

But fentanyl is primarily produced in Mexico — not South America — and comes into the U.S. through the southern border.

“It’s not about drugs,” says Dr. Sabatini. “But he has co-opted the language of the Venezuelan opposition that this is not just a dictatorship – this is a criminal regime.”

As of 2020, the US Department of Justice has accused President Maduro of running a drug-trafficking and narco-terrorism organization, which he denies. Trump said he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela in part because of “drug smuggling” from Venezuela.

Venezuela does not produce large quantities of cocaine – it is mainly Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. There is little cocaine trafficked through Venezuela, which its own government claims to be cracking down on.

A 2025 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report said 84 percent of the cocaine seized in the U.S. came from Colombia and mentioned other countries but not Venezuela in the cocaine section.

The first seven strikes were carried out in the Caribbean, which is not a major sea route for drug trafficking compared to the Pacific Ocean, where subsequent strikes took place.

The US has not detailed its evidence that Maduro runs a drug-trafficking organization. Maduro has repeatedly denied the accusations and in turn accuses the US of imperialism and worsening the country’s economic crisis through sanctions.

There are known cases of his relatives being accused.

In 2016, a federal court in New York convicted his wife’s two nephews of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. The case says they planned to use some of the money to fund his wife’s political campaign. They were later released through a prisoner swap deal with the US.

The Pentagon has ordered the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group to the region.

It includes the USS Gerald R Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

In addition to the US ships we tracked around Puerto Rico – where the US has a military base – the satellite images also showed two ships about 75 miles (123 km) east of Trinidad and Tobago.

One was a guided missile cruiser, the USS Lake Erie.

The other appears to be the MV Ocean Trader, according to Bradley Martin, a former US Navy captain now a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corp.

It is a converted cargo ship designed to support special forces missions while blending in with commercial traffic. It can accommodate drones, helicopters and small boats.

There are a wide variety of missions it could possibly support, including reconnaissance in preparation for strikes. But Mr Martin stressed that his presence “does not necessarily mean that such activities are taking place or are planned”.

Military analysts have pointed out that intercepting drugs at sea does not require as large a force as the current US.

The US has also increased its air presence in the region – BBC Verify has identified a number of US warplanes in Puerto Rico.

Stu Ray, a senior analyst at McKenzie Intelligence Services, says a satellite photo taken Oct. 17 shows F-35 fighter jets on the tarmac, possibly F-35Bs.

These are highly advanced stealth jets valued for their short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities.

On social media, a private jet pilot shared a video of an MQ-9 Reaper drone taken at Rafael Hernandez Airport in Puerto Rico.

They have been used by the US to carry out attacks and surveillance in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Mali.

Earlier in October, BBC Verify tracked three B-52 bombers that flew over the Caribbean and near the coast of Venezuela.

The US Air Force later confirmed that the planes were engaged in a “demonstration bombing attack”.

Flights of B1 bombers and P-8 Poseidon spy planes have also been seen on aircraft tracking platforms.

Images on social media also show military helicopters operating off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago.

Some of them are the Boeing MH-6M Little Birds – nicknamed the “Killer Eggs” – used by US special forces.

Asked if the CIA had been given the authority to eliminate Maduro, Donald Trump dodged the question and said it would be “ridiculous” to answer.

He also said the U.S. is “now looking to the ground,” referring to possible military operations on Venezuelan soil.

Many in Latin America view the CIA with great suspicion because of its long history of covert interventions, attempted regime change, and support for past right-wing military dictatorships, particularly in Chile and Brazil.

Ned Price, deputy US representative to the United Nations and a former senior CIA analyst and senior adviser to the State Department, said the CIA’s covert actions could take “many forms.”

“It could be information operations. It could be sabotage operations. It could be funding opposition parties. It could go as far as overthrowing a regime. There are many options between low-end and high-end options.”

This could include agents used to target trafficking suspects in Venezuela. By the US’s own definition, this could include Maduro himself.

Dr. Sabatini says that since Venezuela is not a major drug production point, there are no cocaine or fentanyl labs to “take out,” but there are airstrips or ports that the US could attack.

“If he wants to be aggressive, he can send a missile into a military barracks. There’s pretty good intelligence that some sectors of the military are involved in cocaine trafficking.”

Or it could be a “smash-and-grab situation,” he notes, as they try to capture Maduro or some of his lieutenants and bring them to justice in the United States.

The big question, he argued, is how long Trump is willing to keep so many American assets parked in the Caribbean.

If the primary purpose of this military build-up is to threaten Maduro, it is unclear whether it is enough to trigger a defection.

It is hard to know whether this amounts to an actual attempt to remove the Maduro regime by force, Professor Albertus reasoned.