While the U.S. military engages with alleged Venezuelan drug cartels via boat strikes, the Trump administration is reopening old wounds as the armed forces settle back into closed bases in Puerto Rico. 

Last month, President Trump sent warships into international waters off the coast of Venezuela. This move was backed by F-35 fighter jets landing in Puerto Rico in an operation against drug cartels. 

Puerto Rican residents in the Humboldt Park neighborhood are among those who are worried.

“It’s a bully move from the United States,” said Alexis Figueroa, a Puerto Rican resident of Humboldt Park.

An unincorporated territory of the United States since its invasion in 1898, Puerto Rico sits between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This makes it the main route in and out of the Caribbean, said Margaret Power, a retired Latin American history professor from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Power said Puerto Rico “has served a key military function for the United States.” 

Since the 1940s, the U.S. Navy had used smaller islands of the archipelago, a group of islands including a large island with smaller ones surrounding it, for military exercises. 

The Navy was pushed out of the island in the early 2000s over safety and health concerns of the residents of Vieques. 

Vieques, one of the smaller islands, is home to over 8,000 Puerto Ricans. 

In 1941, the Navy began a condemnation process and appropriated land through local farmers. The Navy had taken over 77% of the total surface area of Vieques by 1950.

“The U.S. Navy took (Vieques) over, shoved the people into the center of the island and took over the two-thirds on east and the west for target practice and naval maneuver practices,” Power said. 

As the process proceeded, the U.S.Navy relocated families on Vieques and put them into government housing to make room for an extension of the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station.

The Navy “promised that they would clean up all the unexploded ordnances that were left on the island,” Power said of abandoned weapons and ammunition. “Nothing’s happened with cleaning stuff up. We’re done. We’re out of here.”

Studies have found that the rates of cancer in Vieques are much higher than mainland Puerto Rico. Some residents allege that the cancer is related to military testing, though the government is still studying those claims. 

Chicago has one of the larger metropolitan Puerto Rican communities in the mainland United States, so these military movements have provoked strong feelings, according to Daphne Labault, a Puerto Rican business owner and resident of Humboldt Park. 

“The notion that you could literally be touristing, and you are on the beach having a nice day — you touch something and it (could be) a bomb,” Labault said.

Willmynett Díaz, also a Puerto Rican business owner, lamented the impact of U.S. bombing ranges in Vieques.

“People can’t grow their crops there. … There’s very limited areas where they can live,” Díaz said.

Along with land issues, Congress passed the Jones Act in 1920, stating that Puerto Rico can only import products that are “between U.S. ports to be U.S.-built, U.S.-owned and crewed by U.S. citizens.” 

“The economic and social impacts on that little island were disastrous, and we still feel the repercussions of that,” Figueroa, the Humboldt Park resident, said.

“The (old) bases are still there,” Figueroa said. “And they’re ready for a war in one minute.”

With U.S. forces reviving military bases that have been closed for decades, the Puerto Rican community has mixed feelings.

The U.S. Department of War, formerly known as the Department of Defense, did not respond to The DePaulia’s requests for comment. However, according to The Associated Press, during a visit to Puerto Rico last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke with members of the U.S. military stationed there.

“Make no mistake about it, what you’re doing right now is not training. This is the real-world exercise on behalf of the vital national interest of the United States of America to end the poisoning of the American people,” Hegseth said.

Labault worries that the Trump administration is downplaying what is happening.

“Something that I’ve noticed is that I haven’t heard much on it,” Labault said. “It’s going under the radar.”  

Meanwhile, Power, the retired Latin American history professor,said Puerto Rico can do little to control how reopened military bases will impact its residents’ lives.

“Puerto Ricans have no say and no vote in their outcome,” Power said. “The people still do not have power.”

Editor’s note: Laura Vázquez David and LiLi Jarvenpa contributed to this report.

This story was updated on Oct. 14, 2025, to clarify and include more information.

Related Stories:

• A Love Letter to my Not So “Little” Island: Puerto Rico
• Little Village gets a big display of Latine pride as Mexican Independence Day parade takes over
• Hispanic heritage on repeat: my go-to señora DeJamz