The Pentagon said Tuesday that it carried out three military strikes on four suspected drug boats in the eastern Pacific, killing 14 people as the pace of strikes increases despite the administration saying previous strikes have stopped nearly all boat traffic in the region.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the latest batch of deadly strikes in a social media post, as he and President Donald Trump have done since the military attacks began in September.
“The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth wrote on X.
Fourteen suspected narco-terrorists were killed in the three strikes, one person survived.
“All strikes were in international waters with no U.S. forces harmed,” Hegseth said.
The U.S. military searched for the sole survivor before turning the operation over to Mexican authorities.
“Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue,” Hegseth said.
The War secretary said the attacks would continue.
“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Hegseth said. “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”
Previously, U.S. military vessels, including the U.S. Coast Guard, would stop suspected drug smuggling boats, seize drugs and turn those on board over to local authorities.
Trump and Hegseth have shifted course in the areas around Venezuela amid a buildup of U.S. military forces in the region. So far, U.S. officials have reported military strikes on 13 boats, killing at least 57 people. Most of the strikes so far have been in the Carribean, but last week the military started engaging in the eastern Pacific.
“Those drug ships aren’t coming in anymore, we can’t find the ships. There’s no ships coming in with drugs,” Trump said Tuesday morning in Japan.
After nearly every strike, Trump and Hegseth have posted videos of the deadly attacks.
Trump’s shift to military strikes instead of interdiction has drawn criticism from Democrats, a few Republicans and some foreign leaders. Experts have raised legal and ethical questions about the justification for the strikes.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday during her daily news conference that she sent her foreign affairs secretary to meet with the U.S. ambassador to discuss the matter.
“We do not agree with these attacks,” she said.
Last week, Trump said the U.S. military could soon go after drug smuggling on land and would consider taking the matter to Congress, but stopped short of saying he would seek congressional approval.
The Senate recently shut down a proposal led by Democrats that would have required Trump to get congressional approval before using the military to destroy suspected drug boats in the region.
After one of the U.S. strikes against a speedboat, agents from the Dominican Republic’s National Drug Control Directorate and the Dominican Republic Navy seized 377 packages of suspected cocaine about 80 nautical miles south of Beata Island, Pedernales province.
The administration is putting pressure on Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. Maduro has been accused of consolidating power through fraudulent elections. In 2024, his reelection was widely condemned as illegitimate, with allegations of vote tampering and intimidation of opposition leaders. Maduro is also facing allegations of human rights abuses, corruption, and involvement in illegal narcotics trafficking. U.S. prosecutors have charged Maduro with running a drug cartel using cocaine trafficking as a tool to sustain the regime and put a $50 million bounty on information leading to his arrest.
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, U.S. presidents of both parties have used the military to kill terrorists abroad, including members of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
