Secretary of State Marco Rubio is traveling to Central America on Saturday, kicking off his first official trip with a visit to Panama amid tensions over President Trump’s threats to seize control of the Panama Canal.
Mr. Rubio’s plan to visit four Central American nations, along with the Dominican Republic, reflects the Trump administration’s intense focus on halting illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as the influence migration will have on American diplomacy in the coming years. Mr. Rubio’s other planned stops are El Salvador, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
The itinerary also follows Mr. Rubio’s longstanding interest in Latin America. The son of Cuban immigrants, Mr. Rubio was a Republican leader on U.S. policy toward the region during his Senate career.
The trip’s highlight is likely to be Mr. Rubio’s visit to Panama, which will include a stop at the Panama Canal, State Department officials said. That sets up a potentially tense dynamic with Panamanian leaders, who say they are unwilling even to discuss transferring control of the canal.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to reclaim control of the canal, a vital shipping lane built and administered by the United States in the early 1900s. Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio have cited the presence of Hong Kong-based companies near the canal’s entrances as a strategic threat, suggesting that China could use them to shut it down.
In an interview on Thursday with the conservative host Megyn Kelly, Mr. Rubio said the president’s interest in the canal was quite serious and would be a main topic of conversation during his visit to Panama City despite strong opposition there to relinquishing control of the waterway.
During a news conference the same day, for instance, President José Raúl Mulino of Panama dismissed the notion that he would even speak to the United States about giving up control of the canal.
“I cannot negotiate and much less open a negotiation over the canal,” Mr. Mulino told reporters. “It is sealed. The canal belongs to Panama.” He added that he was willing to discuss immigration and combating drug trafficking.
Mr. Rubio will meet with Mr. Mulino in Panama City and with the administrator of the canal, according to Mauricio Claver-Carone, the U.S. special envoy for Latin America.
From Panama, Mr. Rubio will head to El Salvador, where he will meet with the country’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, an admirer of Mr. Trump who has led a harsh crackdown on gangs in his country. On Mr. Rubio’s agenda will be persuading Mr. Bukele to restore a deal from Mr. Trump’s first term, under which El Salvador accepted deported migrants from other countries, including Venezuela.
In related diplomacy, Mr. Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, traveled to Venezuela on Friday and met with President Nicolás Maduro. Mr. Grenell planned to tell Mr. Maduro “to take back all of the Venezuelan criminals and gang members that have been exported to the United States, and to do so unequivocally and without condition,” Mr. Claver-Carone said.
Mr. Grenell also planned to demand that Mr. Maduro accept repatriation flights of Venezuelan gang members who the Trump administration says pose a major threat to American cities, Mr. Claver-Carone said.
He added that Mr. Grenell would also insist that Mr. Maduro release Americans wrongfully imprisoned in the country but would offer no concessions. “We don’t need Venezuelan oil,” he said.
Mr. Grenell’s visit comes despite a $25 million bounty for information leading to the arrest of the Venezuelan leader, a reward increased by the Biden administration from a $15 million bounty imposed by the Trump administration in 2020. Senior Biden officials also met with Mr. Maduro in 2022 to negotiate the release of Americans wrongfully imprisoned in Venezuela.
Even before the news of Mr. Grenell’s trip to Latin America on the eve of Mr. Rubio’s first voyage abroad, analysts had predicted tensions between the roles of the respective diplomats. Mr. Grenell, who had eyed the secretary of state post for himself, has a vaguely defined job description, works out of the White House and reports to Mr. Trump.
His meeting with Mr. Maduro would seem to clash with Mr. Rubio’s hard-line views toward the Venezuelan leader, who he has long said should be politically isolated. Mr. Claver-Carone noted that Mr. Grenell’s trip did not reflect any change in Mr. Rubio’s support for Mr. Maduro’s political opposition or the need for “democratic change in Venezuela.”
“Both Rubio and Grenell seem to be competing for ownership of the Venezuela file,” said Juan Gonzalez, a National Security Council official in the Biden White House who handled Latin America.
“If the priority is a migration accord, they’ll get further by engaging in dialogue than by a return to the failed maximum pressure strategy,” added Mr. Gonzalez, who also met with Mr. Maduro in 2022 when he led talks that won the release of Americans imprisoned in the country.
In Guatemala City, Mr. Rubio will discuss migration issues with a new government that has earned early good will from the Trump administration for being “very supportive of flights, including military flights, in order to repatriate Guatemalans,” Mr. Claver-Carone said. “And we look forward to deepening those discussions.”
In the Dominican Republic, Mr. Rubio intends to discuss the chaos in neighboring Haiti, as well as efforts to stop the flow of narcotics through the Caribbean, Mr. Claver-Carone added.
And in all those countries, he said, Mr. Rubio will discuss China’s efforts to increase its influence in the region.
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