Caracas accused Washington of seeking to provoke an incident to justify a military escalation in the region and regime change. Caracas accused Washington of seeking to provoke an incident to justify a military escalation in the region and regime change. According to Venezuelan officials, the “Carmen Rosa” boat, a small nine-person fishing vessel, was halted in an “illegal and hostile fashion” by the US Navy destroyer Jason Dunham while navigating in Venezuelan waters. Caracas denounced that 18 heavily armed US soldiers boarded the “small and harmless” boat and occupied it for eight hours. Washington’s Caribbean military buildup followed the administration’s raising of the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million as part of a “narco-trafficking” indictment introduced in 2020.