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Military strikes will not take place inside Venezuela, President Trump told reports on Friday, a day after anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal military chiefs were planning to hit drug-smuggling routes in the country.
“No. It’s not true,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One when asked about the possibility of strikes.
According to the Journal, “The Trump administration has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. If President Trump decides to move forward with airstrikes, they said, the targets would send a clear message to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that it is time to step down.
“While the president hasn’t made a final decision on ordering land strikes, the officials said a potential air campaign would focus on targets that sit at the nexus of the drug gangs and the Maduro regime. Trump and his senior aides have been particularly focused on unsettling Maduro as the U.S. military has attacked boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.
“The potential targets under consideration include ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips, according to one of the officials.”
On Friday, a White House spokeswoman denied the claims.
“Unnamed sources don’t know what they’re talking about,” she said, adding that announcements relating to policy around Venezuela “would come directly from” the President himself.
The US has built up a significant military presence in the Caribbean in recent months, including fighter jets, warship and troops. Last week, an aircraft-carrier strike group was relocated from the Mediterranean to the area.
Since September, around a dozen lethal strikes have been launched on vessels in the Caribbean and now the Pacific that were allegedly being used to smuggle drugs into the US.
President Trump has indicated that military action on land is coming.
Last week he told reporters, “The land is going to be next.”
The main focus of the operation has been Venezuela, which the Trump administration has designated as a “narco-state,” placing a $50 million reward for information that will lead to the arrest of its president, Nicholas Maduro.
“You have a narco-state in Venezuela run by a cartel,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters last week when he was asked about the military campaign.
“This is an operation against narco-terrorists, the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere.”
Last month, it was confirmed that Trump had authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.
Trump told reporters he had authorized operations in Venezuela because of the illegal migration of Venezuelans to the United States and drug trafficking.
“Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America… they came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border. And the other thing are drugs.”
