The U.S. military on Wednesday launched its ninth strike against an alleged drug-carrying vessel, killing three people in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, expanding the Trump administration’s campaign against drug trafficking in South America.
It followed another strike Tuesday night, also in the eastern Pacific, that killed two people, Hegseth posted on social media hours earlier. The attacks were departures from the seven previous U.S. strikes that had targeted vessels in the Caribbean Sea. They bring the death toll to at least 37 from attacks that began last month.
The strikes represent an expansion of the military’s targeting area as well as a shift to the waters off South America where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled. Hegseth’s social media posts also drew a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown.
“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said, adding “there will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”
Later Wednesday, he referred to the alleged drug-runners as “the ‘Al Qaeda’ of our hemisphere.”
Republican President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and proclaiming the criminal organizations unlawful combatants, relying on the same legal authority used by President George W. Bush’s administration for the war on terrorism.
Trump says strikes on land could be next
Asked about the latest boat attack, Trump insisted that “we have legal authority. We’re allowed to do that.” He said similar strikes could eventually come on land.
“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re totally prepared to do that. And we’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land.”
Lawmakers from both political parties have expressed concerns about Trump ordering the military actions without receiving authorization from Congress or providing many details.
Appearing alongside Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended such strikes, saying, “If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States.”
Trump said the strikes he is ordering are meant to save Americans and “the only way you can’t feel bad about it … is that you realize that every time you see that happen, you’re saving 25,000 lives.”
Targeting a boat in a thoroughfare for cocaine smuggling
In the first brief video Hegseth posted Wednesday, a small boat, half-filled with brown packages, is seen moving along the water. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless on the water in flames.
The second video shows another boat moving quickly before being struck by an explosion. Video apparently recorded after the explosion shows packages floating in the water.
The U.S. military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since this summer, raising speculation that Trump could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.
In his posts on the strikes, Trump has repeatedly argued that illegal narcotics and the drug fentanyl carried by the vessels have been poisoning Americans.
While the bulk of American overdose deaths are from fentanyl, the drug is transported by land from Mexico. Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, but the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean, is the primary area for smuggling cocaine.
Colombia and Peru, countries with coastlines on the eastern Pacific, are the world’s top cocaine producers. Wedged between them is Ecuador, whose world-class ports and myriad maritime shipping containers filled with bananas have become the perfect vehicle for drug traffickers to move their product.
The administration has sidestepped prosecuting any occupants of alleged drug-running vessels after returning two survivors of an earlier strike to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
Ecuadorian officials later said they released the man who was returned because they had no evidence he committed a crime in their country.
Questions from Congress as strikes continue
Some Republican lawmakers have asked the White House for more clarification on its legal justification and specifics on how the strikes are conducted, while Democrats insist they are violations of U.S. and international law.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was alarmed and angry about a lack of information on the strikes.
“Expanding the geography simply expands the lawlessness and the recklessness in the use of the American military without seeming legal or practical justification,” Blumenthal said.
He said the way to target trafficking would be stopping the boats and interrogating those aboard to find the source of the drugs, “not just destroy the smugglers who are likely to be at the bottom of the smuggling chain.”
The Republican-controlled Senate recently voted down a Democratic-sponsored war powers resolution, mostly along party lines, that would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said he’s met with Rubio.
“He has researched the legal ramifications carefully and he believes we’re on solid ground in attacking these narcoterrorists,” Kennedy said. “I trust his judgment.”
Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Kevin Freking in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
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