Security Challenges in the Caribbean Amid the U.S. Military Deployment

Commentary by Evan Ellis

Published December 4, 2025

From November 24 to 27, 2025, I traveled to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, to present to and participate in the 3rd Regional Network Meeting for Crime Analysts (RNA). The event brought together crime analysts from across the Caribbean, including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France, to discuss challenges posed by organized crime in the region.

The event was as surreal as it was productive, with senior police, military, and other officials discussing illicit flows of drugs, money, and people through the Caribbean, even as the U.S. military was conducting lethal interdictions against suspected drug boats, with widespread speculation that the United States could take decisive military action in Venezuela.

My visit also coincided with a separate visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to Santo Domingo, where he met with Dominican President Luis Abinader and signed agreements allowing the United States to use the country's main international airport, Aeropuerto de las Americas, as well as the San Isidro military air base for counterdrug operations. Separately, as the RNA event unfolded, General Daniel Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Trinidad and Tobago, while U.S. President Donald Trump announced possible talks with Nicholas Maduro.

The event also took place just after Hurricane Melissa had passed through the region, hitting the western portion of Jamaica as a Category 5 storm. Winds topped 200 miles per hour, making it the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the island, and it left at least 45 dead and another 15 missing. The hurricane highlighted how severe weather events continually impact pose a significant challenge for security forces in the region. Participants held a moment of silence for the hurricane's victims.

Just before the RNA event, the UK government acted to limit intelligence cooperation with the United States due to concerns about its military operations. During the event itself, the Dutch government similarly announced a partial suspension of intelligence sharing with the United States. Despite their actions, however, both governments continue to support their own, more traditional counternarcotics activities in the region. Indeed, in the preceding months, two Dutch West Indies Guard Ship (WIGS) frigates Van Amstel and Groningen deployed to the region, with the Van Amstel conducting a port visit in Curacao.

Colleagues from Aruba and Curacao at the RNA expressed concerns over the possible impact of a regional conflagration on their economies due to interruptions in air and maritime shipments as well as tourism; both islands are very close to the Venezuelan coast.

Several colleagues at the event also expressed concerns about economic or other repercussions that could be imposed by the Maduro government if they are perceived as supporting the U.S. position. One recalled the Maduro regime's angry reaction after Curacao had received a U.S. military vessel in August. Similarly, Maduro threatened to cut air service between Venezuela and Dutch Caribbean islands who had canceled flights to the country after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued warnings about risks in the airspace surrounding Venezuela.

Colleagues from Curacao worried that in the event of hostilities, the Maduro government could target the U.S. military Forward Operating Location (FOL) on the island, although they believed that Maduro would likely not do so because it is understood to be a small counternarcotics facility, not a base for U.S. operations against Venezuela.

Finally, some attendees were also worried about a possible new wave of migrants that could leave Venezuela for nearby Caribbean islands if U.S. military action led to generalized violence and a collapse of the economy. They also worried about long-term impacts on tourism to and investment in those islands if violence and political instability in Venezuela persisted following a U.S. intervention.

Colleagues consulted at the event indicated that U.S. interdiction operations had caused a decrease in narco boats from Venezuela and had caused fishing vessels, including those smuggling persons and not just drugs, to stay away from the Venezuelan coast. Other islands represented at the event reported significant drops in narco boat transits. Nonetheless, many at the event did not anticipate a significant long-term impact from U.S. military operations on the overall volume of drug flows, noting that it did not appear that the organizations sending the drugs themselves were being attritted. They noted that most of the large drug shipments sent out of the region move in cargo containers, charter vessels, or commercial flights, and that most shipments going through the Caribbean were bound for Europe, not the United States.

European experts at the RNA event expressed concern that U.S. actions could displace more drugs into commercial cargoes and overland routes eventually departing for Europe from ports and airports in Guyana, Suriname, and elsewhere. The only counterweight to the flow of drugs to Europe is that, according to experts at the event, the abundance of supply to the continent in recent years has caused prices for cocaine there to plummet.

The Caribbean Security Panorama

Beyond the expanded U.S. military presence and actions in the Caribbean, the positive tone of the RNA event was helped by progress against security challenges in the region and expanding cooperation in a number of areas, albeit with significant challenges.

The flow of drugs through the region, in conjunction with the availability of guns, continues to be a major driver of violence and corruption in the region, facilitated by local gangs as well as regional and international groups. The regional law enforcement coordination organization, the Caribbean Community Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (CARICOM IMPACS), reported 329 metric tons of cocaine and 172 metric tons of marijuana seized transiting the region in 2025. Participants at the event spoke of four principal routes through the region, with three focused on supplying the European market: (1) from Venezuela through the Lesser Antilles to Europe, (2) from Venezuela through Guyana to Europe, (3) from Colombia to the Dominican Republic to Europe, and (4) from the Eastern Caribbean to Puerto Rico to the United States, taking advantage of Puerto Rico's status as a U.S. territory.

Overall, the Caribbean continues to be beset by high levels of homicides, tied to a combination of drugs, guns, and gang activity, with particularly elevated homicide rates in the Turks and Caicos (103.1 per 100,000), Anguilla (80.0 per 100,000), Haiti (62.0 per 100,000), St. Kitts and Nevis (59.8 per 100,000), and Saint Vincents and the Grenadines (53.7 per 100,000), among others. In Anguilla, with a population of only 15,000, the number of homicides has jumped from only 2 in 2022 to 12 in 2025.

The spread of the "Sixx" and "Seven" gangs from Trinidad and Tobago to neighboring islands, along with "copycat" criminals, was noted as a factor in rising violence in the Lesser Antilles. Trinidad and Tobago itself has made progress in bringing its own violence down, although the homicide rate has remained high (45.7 per 100,000). Experts in the group attributed the progress to the government's imposition of states of emergency and help from its 2021 anti-gang act, although they noted that progress against gangs is more focused on the incarceration of gang members rather than the elimination of the problem. Likewise, the sustainability of reductions in violence after the state of emergency remains unclear.

In the case of Saint Lucia, the contribution of the Regional Security System (RSS) was highlighted as a factor in helping to get crime under control and bring the homicide rate down modestly to 68 in the first half of 2025, compared to 71 for the same period in 2024.

In Jamaica, where homicides have also dropped by 18.7 percent, to a still-high level of 40.1 per 100,000, authorities at the event attributed falling crime rates to more effective community policing and restoring control over problematic communities.

In Curacao, where homicides had been above 20 per 100,000 in the years before Covid-19, the rate has dropped to a much lower 7-8 per 100,000, according to experts interviewed at the event. Although the Venezuelan gang Los Lobos continues to be a problem monitored by police, experts consulted at the event said that the threats from the criminal group "No Limit Soldiers" has faded since the gang's leader, Tyson Quant, was arrested in Dubai.

Attendees at the RNA event discussed a range of related problems, including the availability of firearms, the presence of foreign gangs, and citizenship-by-investment programs. This included the role and availability of firearms, ranging from small arms to military-grade weapons such as AR-15s, as well as ghost guns and 3D-printed weapons. According to a presentation by CARICOM IMPACS at the event, 95 percent of traceable guns recovered in the region had origins in the United States, often purchased legally but smuggled illegally into the region.

With respect to gangs, participants discussed the specific challenges of Europe-based criminal groups such as Italy's 'Ndrangheta, the Comoros, and the Albanian mafia in the region. They also noted, however, the challenge from the evolution of local gangs such as the "Sixx" and "Seven" gangs, originally from Trinidad but now operating throughout the Lesser Antilles and beyond.

Challenges from the five countries with citizenship-by-investment programs were also discussed. Attendees mentioned the use of illicit proceeds by criminals to obtain citizenship in the region and broader global access as a problem.

Prison capacity continues to be a challenge across the region, where even jails in the Dutch Caribbean are at or over the number of persons they can hold, creating dilemmas for authorities in detaining narcotraffickers and other criminals, and in some cases having to choose not to imprison them. For example, Sint Maarten's prison is at capacity, and a project to renovate and expand the prison at Point Blanche, known as Huis van Bewaring, has been in the works but delayed for years.

Participants also expressed concern over the role of Chinese organized crime, including concerns about inadequate visibility into what is occurring in Chinese communities and concerns that Chinese shops, which are ubiquitous on virtually all of the islands, may be involved in money laundering and other illicit activity. Discussions also covered strategic considerations from the Chinese presence in the region through commercial and people-to-people activities. As participants met, the Chinese military hospital ship Silk Road Arc was in the Pacific and bound for the Caribbean, with scheduled stops in Jamaica and Barbados.

Cooperation Against Organized Crime in the Region

With respect to the English-speaking Caribbean, CARICOM IMPACS has made significant progress facilitating greater sharing of operational intelligence through its organizational units such as the Regional Intelligence Fusion Center (RIFC) and its Crime Gun and Gang Intelligence Unit (CGGIU).

The police forces of the CARICOM nations and the Dutch Caribbean Islands have also made significant progress regarding enhanced cooperation. In August 2025, the police commissioners of Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten signed a letter of intent with CARICOM IMPACS to strengthen intelligence sharing across the region. Such cooperation builds on previous steps, including when Curacao joined CARICOM as an associate member in 2024.

Further strengthening regional cooperation, a petition to make the Dominican Republic a CARICOM member was recently accepted; that membership is expected to strengthen security and intelligence cooperation between the Spanish-speaking, English-speaking, and other parts of the Caribbean.

At a more operational level, during a two-week period from March to April 2025, the government's Interinsular Information Coordination Platform (IICP) conducted a pilot "war room" activity in Curacao, bringing together analysts from each of the five police forces of the Dutch Caribbean to share intelligence on active criminal networks. The activity successfully produced eight intelligence projects, including coordination that facilitated action against a network of Bulgaria-based criminals operating in the region. Building on this success through the IICP, they conducted a second "War Room" in Aruba from November 11 to 14 focused on firearms trafficking. With the perceived positive outcome of these two events, there are plans to expand to as many as four "war room" events per year, with the next likely to be conducted in March 2026 in Sint Maarten. CARICOM nations may also be included in this or other future war room events, consistent with the letter of intent signed there between CARICOM and Dutch Caribbean police chiefs.

Conclusion

The 3rd RNA was important in calling attention to the profound problems of drug flows and other organized violence in the region. It also highlighted the important progress that is being made and helped to advance collaboration between governments and other stakeholders. The positive contributions of the event highlighted that successful collaboration in combatting organized crime in the region involves not only the governments and citizens of the region and the United States, but also other countries with a presence and stakes in what happens in the region, including the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and France, among others.

Evan Ellis is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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