The first stop will be Panama City, at a time when the Trump administration is once again turning its attention to the region with the aim of countering China's already extensive influence in the region and curbing migration.
When Marco Rubio arrives in Latin America this weekend on his first foreign trip as Donald Trump's secretary of state, he will find a region reeling from the new administration's shock diplomacy.
In the early days of Trump’s second term, the new president has doubled down on his drive to take back the Panama Canal, angered Brazilians by turning back migrants in shackles and briefly imposed crushing sanctions and tariffs on Colombia in a dispute over deportation flights.
Rubio's first stop will be Panama City, as the Trump administration refocuses Washington's attention on Latin America, seeking to counter China's already extensive influence in the region and stem migration.
Rubio, the first Latino secretary of state, has already indicated that the State Department will be instrumental in helping Trump achieve his policy of "curbing mass migration" and the issue will be front and center as he continues on to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
The Trump administration has stepped up deportations, sending migrants on military planes to Latin American countries including Guatemala. The flights sparked a brief standoff with Colombia on Sunday after President Gustavo Petro refused to allow two military planes to land, before later agreeing to send Colombian planes to bring back deportees.
Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said Trump’s response to immediately impose tariffs, as well as rarely used sanctions and visa restrictions against Colombia, a longtime U.S. ally, showed countries in the region how seriously the Trump administration is taking migration.
"The message it sent is how willing the Trump administration is to use these tools," Whitaker, now at the Atlantic Council think tank, said on a call with reporters.
Trump has indicated he wants to reassert U.S. dominance over the Western Hemisphere, saying Washington also needs to control Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark — an aspiration firmly rejected by Danish and Greenlandic officials — along with its threats over the Panama Canal.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and fluent in Spanish, has long been a hard-line politician against Cuba and Venezuela.
During Trump's first term, he was a driving force behind the reversal of his predecessor Barack Obama's historic rapprochement with Cuba and also played a major role in crafting a "maximum pressure" campaign against Venezuela, including sweeping sanctions against the OPEC member country's energy sector.
MIGRATION APPROACH
Immediately after taking office, Trump declared a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, barred asylum to people fleeing conflict in their home countries and issued an order seeking to prevent the children of some immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens.
Rubio was quick to respond.
"Our diplomatic relations with other countries, especially in the Western Hemisphere, will prioritize securing America's borders, stopping illegal and destabilizing immigration, and negotiating the repatriation of illegal immigrants," Rubio said in a note outlining his priorities.
Rubio could use his trip to push for so-called "third country" agreements, in which nations accept citizens from other countries deported by the United States, as well as pave the way for more deportation flights that return migrants to their own countries, experts say.
Cuba and Venezuela have frosty relations with the United States and have severely limited the number of deportees they are willing to accept, so the Trump administration will likely have to find other countries to accept them — potentially including some of the countries on Rubio’s itinerary.
"These are the places where Trump probably thinks he can pressure to accept these deportees from other countries," said Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Rubio's talks with Panama will take place in the shadow of Trump's threats. The president, during his inauguration, promised that the United States would take back the Panama Canal, but has not given further details about when or how he planned to reclaim the waterway - which is the sovereign territory of a close partner.
Trump has railed against the fees paid by U.S. shipping to use the canal, but he appears more encouraged by the involvement of a Chinese company in its operations. A State Department spokesman said the trip would be partly about countering China in the region.
At his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month, Rubio said it could be argued that the terms of the U.S. agreement with Panama that the canal cannot be handed over to a foreign power had been breached because of the involvement of Chinese companies.
"In reality, a foreign power today has, through its companies, which we know are not independent, the ability to turn the canal into a choke point and a moment of conflict. And that is a direct threat to the national interest in the security of the United States," Rubio said.
US senators on Tuesday expressed alarm over China's role in the canal, including a Chinese company's work on a bridge spanning the waterway, saying it poses risks to US national security.
The Panamanian government has vehemently denied ceding operation of the strategic waterway to China and insists it administers the canal fairly for all ships.
