Washington to Send a Second Warship to Patrol Southern US Border

Havana, March 20 (ACN) Just few days after the deployment of USS Gravely in the Gulf of Mexico, the US Navy prepares a second warship to be sent to the country’s southern border.

The announcement will be made by the end of the week, according to a non-identified US official, cited by PL news agency.

A Coast Guard communique on Tuesday announced that the Northern Command would deploy two navy warships to the southern border to support Homeland Security and Coast Guard operations. https://tinyurl.com/2j838x8h

Observers say that the unusual and simultaneous deployment of US warships along the southern border aims at sending a signal from the Donald Trump administration about the reinforcement of US military presence in the area.

On Monday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Operations director General Alexus G. Grynkewich reportedly confirmed that the USS Gravely deploys to the “Gulf of America” (as Trump decided to name the Gulf of Mexico) and its surroundings to participate in drug interception and other things targeting the US.

Pentagon officials said that the warship takes members of the Coast Guard Law Enforcement Department onboard and will participate in law enforcement missions against maritime terrorism, proliferation of weapons, transnational crime, piracy, environmental damage and illegal migration on sea.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said that she was notified ahead of time about the deployment of the USS Gravely; she said the warship was in international waters.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez rejected the presence of the US warship in the Gulf of Mexico to presumably fight drug trafficking. On his X account, https://tinyurl.com/28fvyedx Rodriguez said that this military presence in the zone poses a threat to security and peace in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer set sails March 15 from the Yorktown naval station in Virginia.