Amid reports that some military personnel deployed to the Caribbean will be quartered at the Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation Village as part of President Donald Trump’s escalation of drug interdiction efforts, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. confirmed to the Source this week that the refinery operator is looking to the “man camp” as a revenue generator while it works toward restarting operations.

“Yes that’s what they are doing,” he said in a text message.

Bryan said his administration doesn’t have “any conversations with the feds on this topic,” but he said when asked that the housing option may be on the table for contractors brought in to work on the territory’s myriad disaster recovery projects. “Yes,” he said, the V.I. Disaster Recovery Office “is actively trying to facilitate arrangements for housing for contractors in both districts.”

That could position the man camp as a useful stream of federal dollars for the refinery, which has been idle since a disastrous attempted restart under its former owners in 2021. In a 2024 interview with the Source, V.I. Labor Commissioner Gary Molloy estimated that the territory will need to import 7,000 workers to augment the local labor force to complete federally funded recovery projects.

The U.S. Defense Department did not respond to questions about the military deployment and Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation did not provide a statement on the billeting arrangement by Thursday evening. Bryan said Thursday morning that there was no new information about U.S. military presence on St. Croix after indicating to the Source last week that the detachment could include one to two hundred people.

The man camp was previously used to house personnel attached to President Joe Biden’s most recent visit to St. Croix in December. That stay was preceded by a viral video walk-through of the premises, which prompted widespread but unfounded speculation about an imminent restart of the refinery. Responding to questions from the Source, both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Justice Department stated at the time that the refinery hadn’t yet met the necessary prerequisites to resume operations.

More recently, federal regulators approved a second round of chemical removal from the property, and EPA officials emphasized during a July town hall meeting that the agency had not received a required 90-day notice of intent to restart. That meeting followed reports of staff downsizing in April, which prompted refinery operators to issue a statement acknowledging that Port Hamilton “is reevaluating its staffing needs as part of its long-standing efforts to ensure its operations are efficient and cost-effective.”

“This reevaluation could include temporary changes to human resources,” according to a brief statement PHRT issued. “At the same time, Port Hamilton continues to carefully monitor its idle refinery to ensure it is maintained in a safe and environmentally compliant manner, consistent with its regulatory obligations.”

The United States’ heightened military posture in the region follows Trump’s move to declare illegal drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations, like Tren de Aragua and MS-13, as foreign terrorist organizations almost immediately after resuming office in January. Multiple national media outlets reported in August that the U.S. military began deploying upward of 4,000 Marines and Navy personnel to Caribbean and Latin American waters in a show of force meant to curb drug-smuggling activity. On Tuesday, Trump announced that military forces had “shot out” a “drug-carrying boat” near Venezuela, allegedly operated by Tren de Aragua.

“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country — coming in for a long time — and we just, these came out of Venezuela, and coming out very heavily from Venezuela,” he said Tuesday. “A lot of things are coming out of Venezuela. We took it out, and you’ll get to see that … after this meeting is over.”

A video of the airstrike, which the White House claimed killed 11 people, has since circulated widely online.

The deployment of military personnel to the U.S. Virgin Islands specifically came to light in a meeting of the V.I. Public Finance Authority two weeks ago, during which Bryan — who chairs the PFA board — noted Trump’s movement of warships into the region.

“And as a part of that, there’s also going to be soldiers deployed throughout the Caribbean — American soldiers — which is good for the economy,” he said at the time. “The drugs come through, they get lost, they get confiscated, people start speaking — that’s how the death starts. So this is going to stop some of that violence in our area, hopefully.”

Bryan reiterated his stance when a V.I. Consortium reporter asked him about U.S. military presence in the Caribbean during an Aug. 25 Government House press briefing.

“The natural flow of cocaine is to come through our shores, and along with the cocaine comes a lot of bad actors, murder and a lot of the things we don’t want, so I am for it. I understand we have some soldiers staying here in St. Croix as well, too, as part of that initiative. I welcome it,” Bryan said before acknowledging national concerns about Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C.

“But like I tell everybody: for years, every single year we go to D.C., we beg for more Border Patrol, we beg for more Coast Guard, we beg for more ICE agents, because we are a very porous border,” he said. “And when we shore up the one in St. John, St. Croix starts to become the conduit for cocaine … and guns and all kinds of other stuff. So I’m supportive of that. Plus, if you want to put two or three hundred soldiers here in St. Croix as part of that initiative, they gotta eat, drink and make merriment in our community. We are happy to have them. The safest I feel is when President Joe Biden comes down — we have 300 agents here. So more power to ‘em.”