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Secretary Rubio Opens the Shield of the Americas Summit Working Lunch in Doral, Mar. 7, 2026

March 7, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:07:23

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio opened a working lunch at the Shield of the Americas Summit in Doral, Florida, on March 7, 2026, welcoming the hemisphere’s leaders to what he called a critical initiative with a strong focus on security and broad economic cooperation — with cabinet representation, he noted, “from Trade to Commerce to Energy to Treasury.” He relayed that President Trump was traveling to Dover Air Force Base to receive the remains of six Americans killed in the operation against Iranian terrorism and sent his apologies. “You can’t have economic progress without security,” Rubio said.

As evidence the initiative would be “an issue of action” rather than an annual meeting and a paper, Rubio announced that the President had appointed Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as the special envoy dedicated to the relationship, to work with each leader personally “on a daily and weekly and monthly level.” Noem then addressed the lunch: the Shield’s purpose is each nation defending its own sovereignty and security while defeating the cartel organizations the United States has designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations; she cited over three million deportations or removals in the past year, partnerships with El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador, and objectives of destroying the cartels, keeping outside adversaries out of the hemisphere, migration control, and reversing harmful foreign influences.

Why it matters

The lunch is the summit’s operating announcement: a named special envoy with a standing follow-up mandate, stated from the table by the Secretary of State — the mechanism meant to distinguish the Shield of the Americas from a one-off gathering.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the appointment of a dedicated special envoy for the Shield of the Americas initiative, announced March 7, 2026. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page. Note for the editor: the envoy named in the broadcast subsequently left the DHS role; status to be verified before any entry is drafted.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio and Secretary Noem at the Shield of the Americas Summit Working Lunch” (official upload, embedded above); transcript via state.gov as linked in the upload description. Remarks as delivered.