By: Staff Writer
February 24, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is travelling to St Kitts and Nevis on February 25 to participate in the 50th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM.
Discussions with Caribbean leaders is expected to be about regional security, and efforts to counter migration and drug trafficking on Wednesday as Washington seeks to ramp up pressure on Cuba’s leaders while seeking to steer Venezuela in the wake of the operation to seize President Nicolas Maduro.
Secretary Rubio will engage with Caribbean leaders to advance shared priorities, including strengthening regional security, deepening cooperation to combat illegal immigration and illicit trafficking, and promoting economic growth, health, and energy security across the Caribbean. During his visit, the Secretary will reaffirm the United States’ commitment to working with CARICOM member states to enhance stability and prosperity in our hemisphere.
Rubio has long championed a greater U.S. role in the Western Hemisphere and aims to keep it in focus even as Trump’s Republican administration has now shifted its top foreign policy priority to Iran. American forces are massing in even larger numbers in the Middle East than in the run-up to the Jan. 3 operation in Venezuela that captured and deposed Maduro.
Maduro was brought to the U.S. to face charges of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. and has pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, Trump officials have been pressing an interim administration in Caracas to allow U.S. firms access to oil and to instigate reforms since the U.S. military launched an attack on Venezuela on January 3, seizing Maduro and his wife and killing dozens of people, including 32 Cuban bodyguards.
The U.S. is preventing oil shipments from reaching Cuba, worsening an existing energy shortage, and Trump has urged the island’s communist leaders to reach a deal to ease the growing humanitarian crisis.