With Amer­i­can war­ships and troops ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Caribbean wa­ters with­in days, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers is once again mov­ing to quell pub­lic con­cerns about their pres­ence.

His as­sur­ance came just one day af­ter Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Al­varo Sanchez Cordero re­it­er­at­ed his warn­ing that the US naval con­voy rep­re­sents a threat not on­ly to Venezuela but to the wider re­gion.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at an In­de­pen­dence and Eman­ci­pa­tion Day of Prayer func­tion host­ed by Gas­par­il­lo/Bonne Aven­ture Coun­cil­lor Ravi Pooran Ma­haraj and the Gas­par­il­lo Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment at Sur­prise Recre­ation Ground in Gas­par­il­lo yes­ter­day, Sobers said he does not share those fears.

In­stead, he said the de­ploy­ment is not a threat but a form of se­cu­ri­ty for the Caribbean. Echo­ing the view of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that there is no ev­i­dence the US in­tends to re­move Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro from of­fice, Sobers said T&T con­tin­ues to have good re­la­tions with both its South Amer­i­can neigh­bour and the Unit­ed States.

“We would like the Caribbean re­gion to be a zone of peace, but at the end of the day, when there is blood­shed on our streets that is teth­ered to guns, drugs, hu­man traf­fick­ing, [and] mon­ey laun­der­ing, we sup­port any ini­tia­tive by any coun­try that is will­ing to come down here and in­ter­vene to stop that from oc­cur­ring on our streets of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

The min­is­ter, who is al­so the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tabaquite, in which Gas­par­il­lo falls, ac­knowl­edged that Trinidad and To­ba­go has been grap­pling with ris­ing lev­els of crime for two decades, but he as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to tack­ling it head-on.

“We are cel­e­brat­ing in­de­pen­dence from colo­nial mas­ters. We are al­so cel­e­brat­ing eman­ci­pa­tion from slav­ery. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in 2025, we are al­so shack­led with crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, and I think that is why the Prime Min­is­ter would have in­di­cat­ed let’s pray and re­flect while we cou­ple that with oth­er ac­tions that the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing to re­duce crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

While Sobers ad­mit­ted that crime is a coun­try­wide is­sue, he said it is less se­vere in his own con­stituen­cy of Tabaquite. He cred­it­ed Coun­cil­lor Ma­haraj’s lead­er­ship in Gas­par­il­lo for en­sur­ing there were pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to keep com­mu­ni­ties safe.

He said these in­clud­ed the cre­ation of What­sApp com­mu­ni­ty groups, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Po­lice Youth Club As­so­ci­a­tion, and ac­tive in­volve­ment in com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing ini­tia­tives.