A U.S. aircraft carrier is sailing into Latin American waters on Tuesday to join a large military buildup in the area, a signal that the Trump administration will continue to escalate its crackdown on drug smuggling out of Venezuela without congressional approval.
The carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is the largest aircraft carrier in the world and has over 4,000 sailors. The move will put more than a dozen U.S. warships in the region. The U.S. in recent years has usually kept only one or two ships in the area.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the forces “will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere.”