US doubles the reward for Venezuelan Maduro for cartel ties
The US has increased its pay for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, citing Cartel Thailand.
On September 8, Defense Secretary Pete Hegses and his top general made a quiet visit to Puerto Rico on September 8, after the Pentagon reportedly relocated 10 F-35 planes into the island’s territory amid evaporated tensions with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
The trip came shortly after the Pentagon’s announcement that the US had struck a boat off the coast of Venezuela, killing 11 people who said they were “narcotolists.”
Co-directors Hegus and Dan Kane visited Puerto Rico on September 8, according to two defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Puerto Rico Gonzalez Colon was no secret about the meeting. In a post on X, she wrote that Hegses and Kane were “honored to welcome them” to the island’s territory.
She thanked the Trump administration for “acknowledging Puerto Rico for its acknowledgement of its national security in the United States and its fight against our hemisphere drug cartels. The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration considers Puerto Rico as the hub for an ongoing countercartel strike.
The Pentagon moves stealth jet to Puerto Rico
The secret visit came as the Pentagon moved 10 F-35 planes (military stealth fighters) into Puerto Rico. The pentagon does not confirm reports of F-35 movement.
The US overthrew a ship sailing from Venezuela to international Caribbean waters on September 2, killing 11 people the Trump administration described as “narcotelorists” associated with Venezuelan gang Tren de Lagua without providing evidence.
Two days later, a pair of Venezuelan fighters flew near one of the area’s naval vessels, what the Pentagon called “a very provocative move.”
“We strongly advise that cartels running Venezuela do not pursue further efforts to disrupt, block or disrupt anti-narcotics and anti-terrorist operations carried out by the US military,” the Pentagon wrote on its official X account.
The US Venezuelan boat stance raised concerns that it could mark the beginning of a drastic, legally four-told, secret war by the Trump administration over drug cartels in the Southern Hemisphere. Since then, Trump officials have argued that the fentanyl crisis and the flow of drugs entering the US amount to legal justifications to attack drug traffickers.
“We were smoking a drug boat, and there are 11 drug terrorists at the bottom of the ocean. If others try to do that, they will meet the same fate,” Hegses told reporters on the strike on September 4th.
