CAMP LEJEUNE (CMC) — The United States Marines says marines and sailors assigned to the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force — Southern Command (SPMAGTF-SC) held an opening ceremony on Friday at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina to officially kick off their crisis response deployment in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The ceremony marked the sixth consecutive year the SPMAGTF-SC will serve as the crisis response force assigned to the Miami-based US Southern Command.

“The task force is prepared and postured to deploy to the Latin American and the Caribbean region to work alongside partner nation militaries, enhancing combined crisis response efforts,” said the US Marines in a statement.

The US Marines said the pre-deployment training included events such as a command post exercise, a general exercise, a final certification exercise and crisis action team scenarios “to help better prepare the Marines and Sailors for missions they must be prepared to carry out while serving in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

Major Blake Hudgins, the operations officer for SPMAGTF-SC, said: “We have worked through multiple training scenarios based around natural disasters occurring in the Latin American and Caribbean region that allowed our crisis action team to conduct rapid response planning process.