"During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump made the South American nation his favorite scapegoat to propel his anti-immigrant policies, by branding its undocumented migrants in the United States as members of a feared transnational gang, the so-called Tren de Aragua. Then, once in office, he deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to internment in El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison. More recently, Pete Hegseth's Pentagon has been attacking alleged narco-boats in the Caribbean which were said to have left Venezuela."
"So far, four boats have been destroyed, resulting in the deaths of twenty-one people. Even as the Pentagon has published footage of the strikes, it has produced no evidence that the boats were carrying drugs. Just a month before these attacks began, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had offered a reward of up to fifty million dollars "for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction" of Venezuela's President, Nicolás Maduro, "for violating U.S. narcotics laws.""
U.S. political and security measures increasingly portray Venezuela as a source of narcotics and migration threats. Campaign rhetoric labeled Venezuelan migrants as members of a feared transnational gang and facilitated mass deportations to El Salvador's CECOT prison. Pentagon operations have destroyed multiple Caribbean boats claimed to be linked to Venezuela, resulting in civilian deaths while no public evidence of drug cargo has been presented. The State Department offered a large reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of President Nicolás Maduro on narcotics charges. The Administration characterizes Maduro's hold on power as a narco-terrorist enterprise that exploits citizens.
Read at The New Yorker
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