Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The spread of the ‘Sixx’ and ‘Sev­en’ gangs from T&T to neigh­bour­ing is­lands, along with “copy­cat” crim­i­nals, has been cit­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al crime an­a­lysts as a fac­tor in ris­ing vi­o­lence in the oth­er Less­er An­tilles is­lands.

And an­a­lysts have al­so been told of con­cerns from var­i­ous re­gion­al coun­tries re­gard­ing po­ten­tial fall­out from the US-Venezuela is­sues - in­clud­ing be­ing tar­get­ed for host­ing any US fa­cil­i­ty or sup­port­ing the US’s po­si­tion against Venezuela.

The in­for­ma­tion has been pre­sent­ed by Dr Evan El­lis (se­nior non-res­i­dent as­so­ciate with Wash­ing­ton’s Amer­i­c­as Pro­gramme at the Cen­tre for Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies), in a sum­ma­ry fol­low­ing his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Third Re­gion­al Net­work meet­ing for crime an­a­lysts. This was held in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic from No­vem­ber 24-27.

The event brought to­geth­er crime an­a­lysts from across the Caribbean, in­clud­ing the Nether­lands, the UK and France, to dis­cuss chal­lenges posed by or­gan­ised crime in the re­gion.

In his sum­ma­ry on se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges in the Caribbean amid the US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment, El­lis stat­ed, “The event was as sur­re­al as it was pro­duc­tive, with se­nior po­lice, mil­i­tary and oth­er of­fi­cials dis­cussing il­lic­it flows of drugs, mon­ey and peo­ple through the Caribbean, even as the US mil­i­tary was con­duct­ing lethal in­ter­dic­tions against sus­pect­ed drug boats, with wide­spread spec­u­la­tion that the Unit­ed States could take de­ci­sive mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela.”

He said the flow of drugs through the re­gion, in con­junc­tion with the avail­abil­i­ty of guns, con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor dri­ver of vi­o­lence and cor­rup­tion in the re­gion, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by lo­cal gangs as well as re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al groups.

The re­gion­al law en­force­ment co­or­di­na­tion or­gan­i­sa­tion, Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Cari­com IM­PACS), re­port­ed that 329 met­ric tons of co­caine and 172 met­ric tons of mar­i­jua­na were seized tran­sit­ing the re­gion in 2025, El­lis not­ed.

“Par­tic­i­pants spoke of four prin­ci­pal re­gion­al routes with three fo­cused on sup­ply­ing the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket: (1) Venezuela through the Less­er An­tilles to Eu­rope; (2) Venezuela through Guyana to Eu­rope; (3) Colom­bia to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic to Eu­rope, and (4) the East­ern Caribbean to Puer­to Ri­co to the US.”

El­lis added, “Over­all, the Caribbean con­tin­ues to be be­set by high lev­els of homi­cides, tied to a com­bi­na­tion of drugs, guns, and gang ac­tiv­i­ty, with par­tic­u­lar­ly el­e­vat­ed homi­cide rates in the Turks and Caicos (103.1 per 100,000), An­guil­la (80.0 per 100,000), Haiti (62.0 per 100,000), St. Kitts and Nevis (59.8 per 100,000), and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (53.7 per 100,000), among oth­ers. In An­guil­la, with a pop­u­la­tion of on­ly 15,000, the num­ber of homi­cides has jumped from on­ly 2 in 2022 to 12 in 2025. “

He said dis­cus­sions on gangs not­ed the chal­lenge from the evo­lu­tion of gangs such as the “Sixx” and “Sev­en” gangs orig­i­nal­ly from T&T but now op­er­at­ing through­out the Less­er An­tilles and be­yond.

El­lis said, “The spread of the ‘Sixx’ and ‘Sev­en’ gangs from Trinidad and To­ba­go to neigh­bour­ing is­lands, along with ‘copy­cat’’ crim­i­nals, was not­ed as a fac­tor in ris­ing vi­o­lence in the Less­er An­tilles. Trinidad and To­ba­go it­self has made progress in bring­ing its own vi­o­lence down, al­though the homi­cide rate has re­mained high (45.7 per 100,000).

“Ex­perts in the group at­trib­uted the progress to the gov­ern­ment’s (sic) im­po­si­tion of states of emer­gency (sic) and help from its 2021 An­ti-gang Act, al­though they not­ed that progress against gangs is more fo­cused on the in­car­cer­a­tion of gang mem­bers rather than the elim­i­na­tion of the prob­lem.”

“Like­wise, the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of re­duc­tions in vi­o­lence af­ter the State of Emer­gency re­mains un­clear,” he added.

Pos­si­ble US-Venezuela fall­out

El­lis de­tailed the fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by par­tic­i­pants re­gard­ing the US-Venezuela is­sue:

* The pos­si­ble im­pact of a re­gion­al con­fla­gra­tion on Aru­ba and Cu­ra­cao’s economies due to in­ter­rup­tions in air/mar­itime ship­ments and tourism

* In the event of hos­til­i­ties, the Maduro gov­ern­ment could tar­get the US mil­i­tary’s For­ward Op­er­at­ing Lo­ca­tion (FOL) on Cu­ra­cao, al­though they be­lieved that Maduro would like­ly not do so be­cause it is un­der­stood to be a small coun­ternar­cotics fa­cil­i­ty, not a base for US op­er­a­tions against Venezuela.

* Eco­nom­ic/oth­er reper­cus­sions that could be im­posed by the Maduro gov­ern­ment if coun­tries are per­ceived as sup­port­ing Amer­i­ca’s po­si­tion.

* Pos­si­ble new wave of mi­grants that could leave Venezuela for near­by Caribbean is­lands if US mil­i­tary ac­tion led to gen­er­alised vi­o­lence and a col­lapse of the econ­o­my.

* Long-term im­pacts on tourism and in­vest­ment in those is­lands if vi­o­lence/po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty in Venezuela per­sist­ed fol­low­ing a US in­ter­ven­tion.

* Eu­ro­pean ex­perts\con­cern that US ac­tions could dis­place more drugs in­to com­mer­cial car­goes and over­land routes even­tu­al­ly de­part­ing for Eu­rope from ports/air­ports in Guyana, Suri­name and else­where.

El­lis said col­leagues in­di­cat­ed that US in­ter­dic­tion op­er­a­tions had caused a de­crease in nar­co boats from Venezuela and al­so caused fish­ing ves­sels - in­clud­ing those smug­gling per­sons and not just drugs - to avoid Venezuela’s coast. Oth­er is­lands re­port­ed sig­nif­i­cant drops in nar­co boat tran­sits.

“Nonethe­less, many at the event didn’t an­tic­i­pate a sig­nif­i­cant long-term im­pact from US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions on the over­all vol­ume of drug flows, not­ing that it did not ap­pear that the or­gan­i­sa­tions send­ing the drugs them­selves were be­ing at­trit­ted,” El­lis said.

“They not­ed that most of the large drug ship­ments sent out of the re­gion move in car­go con­tain­ers, char­ter ves­sels, or com­mer­cial flights, and that most ship­ments go­ing through the Caribbean were bound for Eu­rope, not the Unit­ed States,” he added.’

Con­cerns about crim­i­nals’ buy­ing’ cit­i­zen­ship

Dr El­lis al­so said at­ten­dees dis­cussed a range of re­lat­ed prob­lems, in­clud­ing firearms avail­abil­i­ty, the pres­ence of for­eign gangs, and chal­lenges by five coun­tries with cit­i­zen­ship-by-in­vest­ment pro­grammes. That con­cerns the use of il­lic­it pro­ceeds by crim­i­nals to ob­tain cit­i­zen­ship in the re­gion and broad­er glob­al ac­cess

Ac­cord­ing to a pre­sen­ta­tion by Cari­com IM­PACS 95 per cent of trace­able guns re­cov­ered in the re­gion had ori­gins in the Unit­ed States, of­ten pur­chased legal­ly but smug­gled il­le­gal­ly in­to the re­gion.

Par­tic­i­pants ex­pressed con­cern over the role of Chi­nese or­gan­ised crime, in­clud­ing con­cerns about in­ad­e­quate vis­i­bil­i­ty in­to what is oc­cur­ring in Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ties and con­cerns that Chi­nese shops, which are ubiq­ui­tous on vir­tu­al­ly all of the is­lands, may be in­volved in mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty.

On co­op­er­a­tion against or­gan­ised crime in the re­gion, El­lis not­ed Cu­ra­cao’s “War Room ini­tia­tive - bring­ing to­geth­er an­a­lysts from each of the five po­lice forces of the Dutch Caribbean to share in­tel­li­gence on ac­tive crim­i­nal net­works.”

“With per­ceived suc­cess, Cari­com na­tions may be in­clud­ed in fu­ture War Room events con­sis­tent with a let­ter of in­tent signed there be­tween Cari­com and Dutch Caribbean po­lice chiefs,” he said.