Trump Confirms 3rd Strike on Alleged Drug Boat in Caribbean

U.S. military forces carried out their third strike against an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean, President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 19.

Posting to Truth Social, the president said, “On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the [United States Southern Command] area of responsibility,” which intelligence had confirmed was “trafficking illicit narcotics.”

The strike occurred in international waters. According to Trump, “three male narcoterrorists” were killed, although he did not say whether or not they were members of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Tren de Aragua. No U.S. forces were harmed.

“STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS,” the president said at the end of his post.

This marked the third military strike this month on alleged drug boats attempting to traffic drugs into the United States, following a strike announced by Trump on Sept. 15. That strike also killed three on board who were allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. The first, which the Trump administration said killed 11 members of the Tren de Aragua narcoterrorist organization, took place on Sept. 2.

“We have to protect our country and we’re going to. Venezuela has been a very bad actor,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Sept. 3. “They’ve been sending millions of people into the country. Many of them are Tren de Aragua, some of the worst people anywhere in the world.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirmed his support of the operations that have coincided with a noticeable buildup in the Caribbean.

“We’re not going to sit back anymore and watch these people sail up and down the Caribbean like a cruise ship. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Rubio said during a press hearing on Sept. 3.

This third military strike also comes amid ongoing drug intercept efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard, which recently confiscated 13,000 pounds of cocaine from a boat in the Pacific as part of Operation Pacific Viper.

On Aug. 25, the operation led the Coast Guard to offload 76,140 pounds of illegal narcotics seized in the Pacific and Caribbean at Port Everglades in Florida, valued at $473 million, “marking the largest quantity of drugs offloaded in Coast Guard history,” according to the Coast Guard.

According to Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, 80 percent of illicit drug seizures in the United States occur at sea.

“Since launching Pacific Viper, the Coast Guard has hunted down, interdicted, and boarded several illegal vessels, seizing thousands of pounds of drugs and detaining several smugglers,” the DHS said in a statement.

Jack Phillips and Yeny Sora Robles contributed to this report.