The Department of Defense is sending even more troops to the Caribbean and Latin America to combat “illicit actors.” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X Friday that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford , an aircraft carrier, and its strike group to deploy to the U.S. Southern Command from the Mediterranean Sea “to bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United