The Trump administration has “made the decision to launch attacks against military installations inside Venezuela,” with strikes possible “in a matter of days or even hours,” according to a bombshell report from the Miami Herald citing sources with knowledge of the situation. This marks a dramatic escalation of the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign, which has already seen a massive military buildup in the Caribbean.
The Pentagon has reportedly ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group to the region, joining an armada that already includes destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones, and roughly 10,000 troops.
The new, pre-authorized targets are reportedly land-based military airbases and ports. Washington alleges these facilities are critical nodes for the “Cartel of the Suns,” a narco-trafficking organization the U.S. claims is led by Nicolás Maduro and run by top members of his regime. The U.S. accuses this network of shipping 500 tons of cocaine per year.
This escalation moves the conflict from sea to land. Since September 2025, the U.S. military has conducted over a dozen lethal airstrikes against small vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing more than 60 people described by the Pentagon as “narco-terrorists.”
While the new operation is aimed at crippling the cartel’s infrastructure, the ultimate target is Maduro himself. The U.S. recently doubled the bounty for his capture to $50 million, the largest in U.S. history.
Sources told the Miami Herald that while Maduro is not an explicit target of the upcoming strikes, his “time is running out.” The massive show of force is intended to send a final message to the Venezuelan leader and his inner circle.
“Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to,” one source said. “What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming.”
