President Trump warned airlines and pilots on Saturday that the airspace near Venezuela was closed, ratcheting up what his administration has characterized as a war against drug cartels.
In a post on social media “to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers,” the president wrote that the airspace “above and surrounding Venezuela” should be considered “closed in its entirety.”
Mr. Trump did not go into further detail in his post, but it came after he warned on Thursday night that the United States could “very soon” expand its killings of alleged drug traffickers in the waters off Venezuela to attacks on its territory.
As president of the United States, Mr. Trump has no authority over Venezuelan airspace. But his social media post could deter airlines from flying into and out of Venezuela and is bound to cause havoc with air travelers, further disrupting Venezuelan commerce and economic traffic.
The United States has built up a substantial military presence in the Caribbean aimed at Venezuela. Administration officials have said their goal is to deter drug smuggling but have also made clear that they want to see Mr. Maduro removed from power, possibly by force.
On Friday, The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump had spoken by phone last week with Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, and discussed a possible meeting between them, even as the United States continued to threaten military action against Venezuela.
The conversation took place late in the week, two people with knowledge of the discussion said. It included a discussion about a possible meeting in the United States between the two men, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. There are no plans at the moment for such a meeting, one of the people said.
People briefed on the Trump administration’s Venezuelan strike deliberations have said that the initial targets could be drug-related facilities, including production or storage facilities used by Colombian cartels that ship cocaine through Venezuela. American spy agencies have given the military intelligence about the location of such facilities in both Venezuela and Colombia.
But U.S. military officials have developed a range of target options for Mr. Trump, including Venezuelan military units that profit from the drug trade or support Mr. Maduro.
Other options have included oil-related facilities. Those strikes could be justified as part of a counterdrug initiative, though they would likely be an attempt to weaken Mr. Maduro’s hold on power by cutting off access to his funding and dramatically ramping up the pressure on him.
Mr. Trump has consistently talked about Venezuela as a source of drugs and illegal immigration into the United States.
But in reality, Venezuela plays only a small part in the drug trade in America. Cocaine produced in Colombia does pass through Venezuela, but most of it goes to Europe. Colombian cocaine that is headed to the United States is exported through the Pacific Ocean. And U.S. agencies have determined that fentanyl is produced almost entirely in Mexico, not in Venezuela, with chemicals imported from China.
The immigration story is more complicated. Large numbers of Venezuelans have come to the U.S. But many have fled Mr. Maduro’s authoritarian government. While the Trump administration has accused a Venezuelan prison gang of fueling violence, the Trump administration has ignored assessments saying that Mr. Maduro does not control the group, Tren de Aragua, and instead has tried to manipulate the intelligence.
The phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maduro last week, which included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came days before a State Department designation of Mr. Maduro as the leader of what the administration considers a foreign terrorist organization, the Cartel de los Soles, came into effect.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
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