By Sarah Roderick-Fitch
The Center Square

As part of the Trump administration’s plan to target narco terrorists around Latin America, the Pentagon announced Friday that a U.S. aircraft carrier will be deployed to the region.

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) and its escorts will shift from the Mediterranean to the U.S. Southern Command Area of Responsibility to support the administration’s counter-drug operations, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

“The enhanced U.S. force presence in the USSOUTHCOM AOR will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere. These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs,” Sean Parnell, U.S. assistant to the secretary for public affairs, posted on X.

The announcement comes as the Pentagon announced its 10th strike on suspected narco terrorists in both the Caribbean and Pacific, with boats and submersibles originating out of Venezuela and Colombia.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump hosted a roundtable at the White House featuring Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and FBI Director Kash Patel. The group discussed military and law enforcement operations targeting drug trafficking and gangs.

“Under the Trump Administration, we’re finally treating the cartels as the core national security threat that they really are … past administrations have tried to mitigate this threat – and our objective is to eliminate it,” the president said during his remarks at the White House Thursday afternoon.

The roundtable comes as the administration continues to target boats suspected of transporting narcotics across the Caribbean and the Pacific. It also comes a week after Patel and Bondi announced 8,700 violent criminals had been arrested as part of Operation Summer Heat.

Trump and Patel touted the numbers as “historic,” claiming record numbers compared to prior administrations.

“Over the past few months, FBI offices in all 50 states made crushing violent crime a top enforcement priority, and that’s what they did – rounding up and arresting thousands of the most violent and dangerous criminals,” the president said during a news conference in the Oval Office.

Since Trump took office in January, the FBI has reported an 86% increase in arrests, with 28,649 arrests in 2024, compared to 15,388 in 2023, 15,771 in 2022, and 16,864 in 2021.

The administration reported that 152,119 lbs. of narcotics have been seized, including 17,011 lbs. of meth, 128,479 lbs. of cocaine, 1,131 lbs. of heroin, 5,101 lbs. of fentanyl powder, and 2,139,738 lbs. of fentanyl pills.

During Thursday’s roundtable, Patel highlighted drug seizures made by the president’s Homeland Security Task Forces.

“Those aren’t numbers, those are lives … enough fentanyl to kill over 200 million Americans gone – evaporated – off our streets permanently,” said Patel.

The Ford is homeported in Norfolk, Va.