“Gringos, go home”: Latin America reacts to Trump’s expanding military campaign

On Friday, the Trump administration escalated its military presence in the Caribbean and South America by announcing the deployment of an aircraft carrier group to the region. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the green light to send the USS Gerald R. Ford—described by the US Navy as “the most capable, adaptable, and lethal combat platform in the world”—to “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities,” according to the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson.

Also on Friday, Hegseth said the United States had carried out yet another military strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing six people on board. He alleged that the vessel was operated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a terrorist organization alongside drug cartels. It has accused Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro of controlling the criminal group and enabling the smuggling of drugs into the United States. Since September, the administration has conducted at least 10 attacks against alleged drug boats, including in the Pacific Ocean. As many as 43 people have been killed so far.

The expanding campaign, which legal experts have warned violates international law and amounts to extrajudicial killings, has raised alarm in Latin America, worsening tensions between the Trump administration and leaders in the region, and reviving the specter of American meddling and intervention in other countries. Reacting to news of the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, Maduro charged the administration with “fabricating a new war.”

Speaking last month at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro condemned the attacks and called for an investigation into President Donald Trump and other US officials involved in the strikes. “Launching missiles over two people in a small boat is a war crime,” Petro told CBS News this week.

In response, Trump described Petro as a “bad guy” and a “thug.” On Friday, the war of words escalated into action, as the administration imposed sanctions on the Colombian president and his family, claiming that he had allowed drug cartels to flourish. “What the US Treasury is doing is an arbitrariness typical of an oppressive regime,” Petro fired back on social media. The country’s interior minister, who was also targeted for sanctions, had strong words for the White House. “For the US, a nonviolent statement is the same as being a drug trafficker,” Armando Benedetti wrote on X. “Gringos, go home.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has also opposed the Trump administration’s strikes. “Obviously, we do not agree,” she said of the military campaign during a recent press conference. “There are international laws on how to operate when dealing with the alleged illegal transport of drugs or guns on international waters, and we have expressed this to the government of the United States and publicly.”

As the Trump administration escalates the military build-up in the region to become the largest in decades—ostensibly to fight trafficking and stop the flow of drugs to the United States—government officials have, internally, clarified the goal of the campaign: to force Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused Maduro of being the leader of a narco-terrorist organization and “responsible for trafficking drugs into the United States.”

In a recent interview with the AFP, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s adviser Celso Amorim expressed concerns about what a potential direct military intervention in Venezuela to topple Maduro could mean for the rest of the region. “We cannot accept an outside intervention because it will trigger immense resentment,” he said. “It could inflame South America and lead to radicalization of politics on the whole continent.”

President Lula, who is expected to meet with Trump in Malaysia over the weekend, indicated to reporters on Friday that he could bring up the issue in conversation with his American counterpart. “If this becomes a trend,” he said, “if each one thinks they can invade another’s territory to do whatever they want, where is the respect for the sovereignty of nations?”