Drug crackdown or regime change

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

Long-range bomber planes, B-52s, have carried out “bomber attack demonstrations” off the coast of Venezuela. Trump has authorised 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 which it alleges carry “narcotics” and “narco-terrorists”, without providing evidence or details about those on board.

The strikes have drawn condemnation in the region and experts have questioned their legality. They are being sold by the US as a war on drug trafficking but all the signs suggest this is really an intimidation campaign that seeks to remove Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro from power.

“This is about regime change. They’re probably not going to invade, the hope is this is about signalling,” says Dr Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at the Chatham House think tank.

He argues the military build-up is a show of strength intended to “strike fear” in the hearts of the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s inner circle so that they move against him.

BBC Verify has been monitoring publicly available tracking information from US ships and planes in the region – along with satellite imagery and images on social media – to try to build a picture of where Trump’s forces are located.

The deployment has been changing, so we have been monitoring the region regularly for updates.

As of 23 October, we identified 10 US military ships in the region, including guided missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships and oil tankers for refuelling vessels at sea.

It is no secret that the US administration, particularly Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would like to see Maduro toppled.

Earlier this year, he told Fox News Maduro was a “horrible dictator” and when asked whether he was demanding that Maduro leave, added: “We’re going to work on that policy.”

But, even for overt critics of Maduro like Rubio, it is difficult to explicitly call for military-backed regime change – something members of Venezuela’s opposition have longed called for.

Donald Trump campaigned against regime change in 2016, pledging to “stop racing to topple foreign regimes”, and more recently has condemned engaging in “forever wars.”

The US does not recognise Maduro as the president of Venezuela, after the last election in 2024 was widely dismissed internationally, and by the opposition in Venezuela, as neither free nor fair. The US embassy in Caracas was closed during Trump’s first presidency in 2019.

The US has upped its bounty for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50m, an incentive for those within his loyal, inner circle to hand him in. But it has yielded no defections.

Venezuelan law professor and senior associate at the CSIS national security think tank, Jose Ignacio Hernández, says $50m is “nothing” for Venezuela’s elites.

There is a lot of money to be made through corruption within an oil-rich state like Venezuela. The former head of Treasury Alejandro Andrade, made $1bn in bribes before he was convicted.

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

Mr Hernández adds: “They will think, in some way or another I am involved in criminal activities too.”

Michael Albertus, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who publishes extensively on Latin America, is not convinced that even a bounty of $500m would persuade Maduro’s inner circle to turn him in.

“Authoritarian leaders are always suspicious of even their inner circle, and because of that, they create mechanisms for monitoring them and ensuring loyalty,” he said.

Economic sanctions on Venezuela have exacerbated the already severe economic crisis, but have not succeeded in persuading senior figures to turn against their president.

Donald Trump has declared this is a war on narcotics traffickers and said one vessel the US struck, on 16 October, was “loaded up with mostly fentanyl.”

But fentanyl is primarily produced in Mexico – not South America – and comes into the US over the southern border.

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

Since 2020, the US Justice Department has accused President Maduro of leading a drug trafficking and narco-terrorism organisation, which he denies. Trump has said he has authorised the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela in part because of “drugs coming in” from Venezuela.

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

A US Drug Enforcement Administration report from 2025 says 84% of the cocaine seized in the US comes from Colombia and mentioned other countries but not Venezuela in its cocaine section.

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

The US has not detailed its evidence of Maduro leading a drug trafficking organisation. Maduro has repeatedly denied the accusations, and for his part accuses the US of imperialism and worsening the country’s economic crisis through sanctions.

There are known cases of those close to him being indicted.

In 2016, a New York federal court convicted the two nephews of his wife for conspiring to import cocaine to the US. The case said they planned to use some of the money to fund his wife’s political campaign. They were later freed in a prisoner exchange agreement with the US.

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

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

As well as the US ships we tracked around Puerto Rico – where the US has a military base – satellite imagery also showed two vessels about 75 miles (123km) east of Trinidad and Tobago.

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

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

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

There are a wide variety of missions it could conceivably support, including reconnaissance to prepare for strikes. But Mr Martin stresses that its presence “doesn’t necessarily mean that those kinds of activities are being carried out or are planned”.

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

The US has also bolstered its air presence in the region – BBC Verify has identified a number of US military aircraft across Puerto Rico.

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

These are highly advanced stealth jets prized for their short take-off and vertical landing capability.

On social media, a private jet pilot shared a video of a MQ-9 Reaper drone, filmed at Rafael Hernández Airport on Puerto Rico.

These 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 which flew across the Caribbean and close to Venezuela’s coast.

The US air force later confirmed that the planes had taken part in a “bomber attack demonstration”.

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

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

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

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

He has also said that the US is “looking at land now”, referring to possible military operations on Venezuelan soil.

The CIA is viewed with a lot of suspicion by many in Latin America because of a long history of covert interventions, attempts at regime-change, and support for past right-wing military dictatorships, notably in Chile and Brazil.

Ned Price, deputy to the US representative to the United Nations and formerly a CIA senior analyst and State Department senior adviser, said CIA covert action can take “many forms.”

“It can be information operations. It can be sabotage operations. It can be funding opposition parties. It can go as far as the overthrow of a regime. There are a lot of options between the low-end and high-end option.”

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

Dr Sabatini says given Venezuela isn’t a major production point for drugs, there are no cocaine or fentanyl labs to “take out” but there are airstrips or ports which the US could target.

“If he wants to be aggressive, he could send a missile to a military barrack. There is pretty good intelligence certain sectors of the military are involved in cocaine trafficking.”

Or it could be a “smash and grab situation”, he notes, where they attempt to seize Maduro or some of his lieutenants and bring them to justice in the US.

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

If the prime purpose of this military build-up is to threaten Maduro, it is unclear whether it is enough to prompt defections.

Whether that goes as far as an actual attempt to dislodge the Maduro regime through force, ponders Professor Albertus, it is hard to know.