The Trump administration has killed almost 100 people in a string of military strikes against boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. While officials claim the attacks are to prevent the flow of deadly fentanyl into America, the overall goals of the campaign are muddled at best. But according to The Washington Post, the “war” against suspected narcotics smugglers, the brainchild of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, began as an effort to curb immigration to the United States. “Miller’s larger vision was to reduce the flow of drugs — and migrants — into the United States,” according to one of the former U.S. officials who spoke to the Post.
What reportedly began as Miller’s scheme to reduce migration may provoke even more people to flee north toward presumed safety in the United States.
Since then, the campaign has morphed into a potential war for regime change in Venezuela. And in a cruel bit of irony, what reportedly began as Miller’s scheme to reduce migration may provoke even more people to flee north toward presumed safety in the United States. War causes refugees. Period. Adding a military campaign on top of Venezuela’s ongoing problems would only force more people to leave.
Although small boats from Venezuela became the eventual targets of the lethal campaign, but Miller was reportedly focused on Mexican drug cartels originally: “He figured that attacking cartels would diminish their power and help stabilize Latin American countries, resulting in fewer people risking the trek to the United States, according to one of the former U.S. officials familiar with Miller’s deliberations.”
On a basic level, there’s some logic to Miller’s thinking. Drug cartels and other organized gangs are a major destabilizing factor in Latin America. With their violent quests for power and territory, such cartels have prompted millions of people to leave their home countries over the years. And countries that once opened their arms to migrants are now adopting stricter policies leaving displaced people no recourse but to move on.
Many asylum seekers who find themselves in U.S. immigration courts cite fear of violence and retribution from various Latin American gangs. President Joe Biden attempted to address some of the “root causes” of the surge in migration by proposing $4 billion in humanitarian aid to the region. But conservatives denounced those efforts and continued to falsely claim that an “open borders” policy was drawing too many migrants north.
Befitting his punitive worldview, Miller seems not to have considered a soft power approach to quell migration and leapfrogged straight to the use of force. But Miller proved once again to be a victim of his own policies’ success. With the Trump administration’s assistance and pressure for results, Mexico was successful enough at curbing cartel action at the border earlier this year that direct U.S. military action was seen as unnecessary.
The rapid escalation beyond Miller’s original plan to take on drug cartels highlights how misguided it was to begin with With his initial plans were stymied, Miller instead looked south to Venezuela and found welcome partners in Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. In the process, the reported focus on preventing migration became tangled up with the goals of other members of the administration. The scandal-prone Hegseth has leaned into testosterone-heavy chest-thumping rhetoric to shore up his shaky perch atop the Pentagon; Rubio has long had his eye on prompting regime change in Venezuela, that is removing socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro from power. Toward that end, President Donald Trump’s public remarks have increasingly framed the strikes as a step toward toppling Maduro, who he has claimed without evidence is running major drug cartels. Trump has also claimed publicly that the ultimate goal is seizing Venezuela’s oil. Miller appears happy to lean into Trump’s convoluted and retroactive rationale for menacing Venezuela. Miller wrote in a post on X that Venezuela’s nationalization of its oil industry was “the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.” If the conflict escalates into a war with Venezuela, then Miller is reportedly prepared to take advantage at home as well. The Post reported that he has “indicated to colleagues that a strong reaction from Caracas could provide the pretext to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants from the United States.” Doing so would be an excuse to speed up the deportation of migrants whose legal status Miller has worked to revoke. The rapid escalation beyond Miller’s original plan to take on drug cartels highlights how misguided it was to begin with. Unleashing war in Latin America is not the path toward more stability or reduced migration. The millions of Venezuelans who fled over the last 20 years did so mostly in the face of the country’s economic collapse, and the U.S. launching attacks on Venezuela, for whatever the reason, wouldn’t solve that problem —it would exacerbate it. Because when our Latin American neighbors are afraid where they live, they look at the United States as the most promising option for a better life.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW Daily. 
