WASHINGTON — The military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration says are smuggling drugs is stepping down, three U.S. officials said Thursday.
The officer, Adm. Alvin Holsey, is leaving his job as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it says is a major counterdrug and counterterrorism mission.
It was unclear why Holsey is leaving now, less than a year into his tenure, and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37-year career. But one of the U.S. officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.
In a statement on social media, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made no mention of any friction with his four-star commander. “On behalf of the Department of War,” said Hegseth, using the name of the department he now prefers, “we extend our deepest gratitude to Admiral Alvin Holsey for his more than 37 years of distinguished service to our nation as he plans to retire at year’s end.”
But other officials at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill said the praise masked real policy tensions concerning Venezuela that the admiral and his civilian boss were seeking to paper over.
Since early September, U.S. Special Operations forces have struck at least five boats off the Venezuelan coast that the White House says were transporting drugs, killing 27 people. U.S. officials have privately made it clear that the main goal is to drive Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, from power.
But a range of specialists in the laws governing the use of force have disputed the Trump administration’s claim that it can lawfully kill people suspected of drug trafficking like enemy troops instead of arresting them for prosecution. As a matter of domestic law, Congress has not authorized any armed conflict.
As a matter of international law, for a nonstate group to qualify as a belligerent in an armed conflict — meaning its members can be targeted for killing based on their status alone, not because of anything they specifically do — it must be an “organized armed group” with a centralized command structure, and engaging in hostilities.
Holsey, who is Black, becomes the latest in a line of more than a dozen military leaders, many of them people of color and women, who have left their jobs this year. Most have been fired by Hegseth or pushed out.
Hegseth fired the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who is Black; the first woman to command the Navy, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; and the U.S. military’s representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield. He also pushed out Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Kruse, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Others have not fit into the mold of what Hegseth considers a leader in his Pentagon. In August, the Air Force’s top uniformed officer, Gen. David Allvin, announced that he would retire early — two years into a four-year term.
About two weeks ago, Hegseth summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from around the world to a meeting at Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. It was a gathering without precedent in recent memory. The secretary told the senior officers that he was tightening standards for fitness and grooming, cracking down even more rigorously on “woke garbage” and rejecting the notion of “toxic” leadership.
It was not clear Thursday who would replace Holsey, who just this week visited the islands of Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada.
News of the admiral’s departure comes a day after The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela.
Trump acknowledged Wednesday that he had authorized the covert action and said the United States was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory.
All of these developments come as the U.S. military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela.
While Holsey has been the highest-ranking military overseeing the military strikes, the decision to carry them out has been driven by the White House and the strikes themselves have been conducted by Special Operations forces.
The Trump administration has justified its attacks on suspected drug smugglers as national self-defense at a time of high overdose deaths in the United States. But the surge in overdoses has been driven by fentanyl, which comes from Mexico, not South America.
The size and scope of the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean region is significant. There are now about 10,000 U.S. troops, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also some 2,200 Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight warships and a submarine in the Caribbean.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
