“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 Nicolas 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.
Trump came into office pledging to crack down on the flow of illegal narcotics, responsible for tens of thousands of American deaths each year, from Latin America into the U.S. Since Trump's inauguration, the U.S. has deployed an unprecedented amount of military firepower to the Caribbean, while simultaneously ramping up a lethal campaign against alleged drug smugglers in the region.
Air attacks on targets inside Venezuela would mark a significant escalation of the campaign, which has until now been limited to airstrikes on alleged drug boats.
The administration has focused in particular on combating the fentanyl crisis, as deaths related to the drug in the U.S. have soared in recent years. That synthetic opioid, though, is produced in Mexico with Chinese precursors. There is no evidence Venezuela produces or traffics fentanyl, experts say. The country, though, has long been a transit route for Colombian cocaine, and some high-ranking Venezuelan government and military officials have been charged by American prosecutors with smuggling that drug.
About 80,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2024, down 27% from the peak year in 2023. Synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, killed more than 48,000 last year, while cocaine killed 22,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"President Trump has been clear in his message to Maduro: stop sending drugs and criminals to our country," said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. "The President is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our homeland."
Ahead of possible land strikes, the Trump administration has embarked on a messaging campaign to cast Maduro as the head of a drug trafficking enterprise that seeks to "flood" the U.S. with drugs -- a charge Maduro has denied.
"You have a narco-state in Venezuela run by a cartel," Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has taken a central role in the Trump administration's pressure campaign on the country, told reporters last week when asked about the expanding military campaign. "This is an operation against narcoterrorists, the al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere. . .And they need to be dealt with."
Hitting targets on land would increase pressure on the dictator, and Trump allies have begun to suggest that he flee the country. "If I was Maduro, I would head to Russia or China right now," Sen. Rick Scott (R, Fla.) said.
U.S. officials now and in Trump's first term have applied pressure in the hope of provoking a barracks rebellion or an uprising, though the military has stood with Maduro and there have been no reports of protests in Venezuela. The show of American force now, though, is different.
"This is the U.S. really putting to the test the claim that Maduro is weak and the military will flip with just a gentle push," said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela analyst at the Atlantic Council.
Trump has said publicly that he may order airstrikes in Venezuela, and the Pentagon is sending America's most advanced aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships to the Caribbean.
The U.S. has also conducted several bomber aircraft missions near the Venezuelan coast over the past two weeks, sending B-52s and B-1s to probe the country's defenses and test the military's reaction to the show of force.
Trump also took the unusual step of confirming that he has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert actions in the country.
Venezuela's military has sophisticated air defenses, including a substantial amount of Russian-made equipment.” [1]
1. U.S. Eyes Striking Venezuelan Military Targets. Holliday, Shelby; Seligman, Lara; Bergengruen, Vera. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 31 Oct 2025: A1.
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