Caribbean

The U.S. Southern Command's area of responsibility includes the Caribbean and the waters around Latin America.

Maritime drug-smuggling in the Caribbean commonly uses open-hulled fishing skiffs powered by powerful outboard motors to transport narcotics to nearby islands such as Trinidad.

The U.S. Coast Guard has conducted drug interdiction operations in the Caribbean for many years.

In 2025, sea surface temperatures across the Caribbean were among the warmest on record for the date, exceeded only by the record-warm years 2023 and 2024, according to Yale's Climate Connections.

In 2025, Yale's Climate Connections reported that sea surface temperatures across the Caribbean were among the warmest on record for the date, apart from the record-warm years of 2023 and 2024.

A 2025 Climate Central analysis using the Climate Shift Index estimated that human-caused climate change increased the odds of the Caribbean's unusual sea surface warmth by at least 500-fold.

As of 2025, most cocaine destined for the United States originates along Colombia’s Pacific coast and commonly transits through Ecuador, Peru, or Venezuela before moving north via the Caribbean, Mexico, or increasingly via Pacific maritime routes.

Slow-moving tropical cyclones produce prolonged heavy rainfall that increases the risk of dangerous landslides and life-threatening flooding on mountainous Caribbean islands such as Jamaica and Hispaniola.

About 75% of the cocaine produced in Colombia is smuggled through the eastern Pacific Ocean rather than through the Caribbean.

U.S. counternarcotics operations in the Caribbean commonly deploy ships and surveillance aircraft as part of efforts to disrupt drug trafficking networks.

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease was first reported in 2014 and has since spread throughout the Caribbean.

In the 1980s, the Caribbean was a dominant route used by Colombian drug cartels to ship cocaine and other illicit goods to South Florida.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed to what is now the Bahamas believing he had reached Asia; he subsequently made three additional voyages to South America, Central America, and the Caribbean and did not reach what is now the United States.

U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is the United States combatant command responsible for military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Caribbean region periodically re-emerges as a channel for moving illicit goods, and traffickers have increasingly routed cocaine shipments toward Europe where demand and retail prices for cocaine are higher.

Maritime smuggling routes through the Caribbean are predominantly used to transport cocaine to Europe.

Fentanyl is typically trafficked into the United States via different routes than the Caribbean maritime routes used for cocaine.

The Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific are established maritime transit regions for illicit narcotics smuggling.

U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) is the primary U.S. military combatant command responsible for operations in the Caribbean and South America.

A longstanding multinational partnership of regional countries has historically underpinned U.S. counterdrug operations in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.