US Deputy Secretary of State wraps up official visit today

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected] 

Unit­ed States Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau ar­rived in the coun­try yes­ter­day for a two-day of­fi­cial vis­it, as the Gov­ern­ment moves to deep­en co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton on se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er ar­eas of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.

Lan­dau, the sec­ond-rank­ing of­fi­cial at the US De­part­ment of State, is ex­pect­ed to hold dis­cus­sions with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing his vis­it, which con­cludes to­day.

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar will lead dis­cus­sions with Lan­dau.

The min­istry said the vis­it re­flects “progress in deep­en­ing al­liances” with the US and in trans­lat­ing the stronger re­la­tion­ship in­to “prac­ti­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties” for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains fo­cused on en­sur­ing that co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton de­liv­ers “mean­ing­ful and last­ing ben­e­fits” for the pop­u­la­tion.

Lan­dau is the 23rd Unit­ed States Deputy Sec­re­tary of State. He as­sumed of­fice on March 25, 2025, af­ter be­ing nom­i­nat­ed by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and con­firmed by the US Sen­ate.

His vis­it comes against the back­drop of ex­pand­ing se­cu­ri­ty and de­fence co­op­er­a­tion be­tween T&T and the US, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ar­eas of counter-nar­cotics, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, mil­i­tary train­ing and re­gion­al crime.

Just days be­fore Lan­dau’s vis­it, the US South­ern Com­mand ac­ti­vat­ed a new Joint Task Force West­ern Hemi­sphere (JTF-WHEM), which is in­tend­ed to co­or­di­nate US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions with al­lies and part­ners across the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

US sources told Guardian Me­dia that T&T De­fence Force is ex­pect­ed to be among the re­gion­al part­ners in­volved with the pur­pose-built task force.

The new en­ti­ty is de­signed to main­tain sus­tained pres­sure on drug-traf­fick­ing net­works and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions con­sid­ered threats to re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

It is al­so ex­pect­ed to im­prove co­or­di­na­tion with al­lied gov­ern­ments, speed up de­ci­sion-mak­ing and in­crease the tem­po of multi­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions against crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­at­ing across the re­gion.

The de­vel­op­ment fol­lows in­creased US mil­i­tary en­gage­ment with T&T in re­cent months.

In June, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­closed that mem­bers of the US Navy SEALs were al­ready in the coun­try han­dling lo­gis­tics ahead of a larg­er de­ploy­ment. She said the US teams would work along­side lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty forces, pro­vid­ing train­ing and sup­port in bor­der pro­tec­tion, drug in­ter­dic­tion and in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty.

The an­nounce­ment came short­ly af­ter the US Em­bassy and US Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Com­mand South re­vealed that US Army Civ­il Af­fairs Sol­diers as­signed to the 98th Civ­il Af­fairs Bat­tal­ion (Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) had joined mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force for tac­ti­cal com­bat ca­su­al­ty care and jun­gle tech­ni­cal ex­changes.

Lan­dau’s dis­cus­sions with the Prime Min­is­ter are there­fore ex­pect­ed to take place against a back­drop of in­creas­ing op­er­a­tional co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries, with Wash­ing­ton plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on re­gion­al part­ner­ships and T&T seek­ing greater sup­port for its na­tion­al and bor­der se­cu­ri­ty ef­forts.

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry did not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on the spe­cif­ic is­sues to be dis­cussed dur­ing Lan­dau’s vis­it.