Alexander: Drug interdiction ongoing despite pause in US maritime strikes

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the fight against nar­co-traf­fick­ing re­mains ac­tive, even as the Unit­ed States has not car­ried out a ki­net­ic mar­itime strike since the ar­rest of Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Alexan­der made the com­ments in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia as he en­tered Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, amid ques­tions about the ap­par­ent pause in US-led in­ter­dic­tion op­er­a­tions in the south­ern Caribbean.

The re­gion saw its most in­tense pe­ri­od of ki­net­ic strikes be­gin­ning in Sep­tem­ber 2025, when 11 peo­ple were killed in an at­tack on a speed­boat al­leged­ly linked to the Tren de Aragua gang. Be­tween Sep­tem­ber and De­cem­ber, more than 25 con­firmed strikes were car­ried out across the Caribbean and east­ern Pa­cif­ic. Two Trinida­di­ans were among those killed in a blast on Oc­to­ber 14, the fifth ma­jor mar­itime en­gage­ment of the cam­paign.

By the end of the year, more than 100 peo­ple had been killed. The fi­nal record­ed mar­itime strike of 2025 oc­curred on De­cem­ber 31, when two ves­sels were hit by Joint Task Force South­ern Spear, leav­ing five peo­ple dead.

The cam­paign cul­mi­nat­ed with Op­er­a­tion Ab­solute­ly Re­solve on Jan­u­ary 3, a tac­ti­cal strike and spe­cial forces raid on a com­pound in Cara­cas that re­sult­ed in the cap­ture of Maduro and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 ca­su­al­ties.

Asked why the strikes ap­pear to have stopped, Alexan­der said, “Well, prob­a­bly peo­ple stop go,” re­fer­ring to in­di­vid­u­als il­le­gal­ly trav­el­ling be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela.

He main­tained, how­ev­er, that in­ter­dic­tion ef­forts are on­go­ing.

“Drug in­ter­dic­tion ex­er­cis­es are nev­er over. We have been do­ing this with the Amer­i­cans for years.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pre­vi­ous­ly voiced strong sup­port for the US op­er­a­tions. On Sep­tem­ber 2, fol­low­ing a lethal strike on a Venezue­lan ves­sel in the south­ern Caribbean that killed 11 peo­ple de­scribed as “nar­co-ter­ror­ists,” she said the Unit­ed States should “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly,” adding that they had no sym­pa­thy from her.

She al­so ar­gued that curb­ing the flow of il­le­gal guns, drugs and hu­man traf­fick­ing would re­duce vi­o­lence across the re­gion and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and called for di­vine pro­tec­tion for US mil­i­tary per­son­nel in­volved in the in­ter­dic­tion mis­sion.

Mean­while, on Thurs­day Alexan­der avoid­ed di­rect­ly an­swer­ing ques­tions on how many US mil­i­tary per­son­nel re­main sta­tioned in T&T. The ques­tion was raised at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, but the min­is­ter ini­tial­ly de­flect­ed, re­spond­ing in­stead that many for­eign­ers were cur­rent­ly in the coun­try for Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia pressed the min­is­ter, clar­i­fy­ing that the ques­tion specif­i­cal­ly re­lat­ed to US mil­i­tary per­son­nel who re­port­ed­ly came to par­tic­i­pate in train­ing and hu­man­i­tar­i­an work pri­or to the re­moval of Maduro. Once again, the min­is­ter was un­able to pro­vide a spe­cif­ic an­swer.

“Well, as I said be­fore, there are a num­ber of per­sons here in terms of the train­ing and de­vel­op­ment. We al­ways have per­sons train­ing per­sons here. We are thank­ful that they are able to come to our shows and share their ex­pe­ri­ence with us and teach us things. And we love that. We wish it could hap­pen every day, but it isn’t al­ways pos­si­ble. So, they come and go. At this time, I can­not speak to whether they are here or not.”

That same ques­tion was put to For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers on Mon­day.

At the time, Sobers would on­ly say, “Ob­vi­ous­ly el­e­ments in the US are in fact in Trinidad, they’ve al­ways ever been in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have el­e­ments of US law en­force­ment ac­tive­ly work­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which would as­sist us in terms of com­bat­ting the same transna­tion­al crime that we are fight­ing.”

On No­vem­ber 20, 2025, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there were 250 marines from the 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) in the coun­try, train­ing De­fence Force per­son­nel at Cu­mu­to, Teteron, and Omega.

And then on No­vem­ber 26, the Prime Min­is­ter said as far as she was aware, those troops had left, and there were no more US mil­i­tary per­son­nel in the coun­try.