Trump Promises ‘Very Hard’ Land Strikes Coming Against Drug Traffickers

President Donald Trump said he would be initiating “very hard” land strikes targeting drug smugglers after a series of military strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs intended for distribution in the United States.

“By knocking out those boats, we have dropped drugs, fentanyl, about 33 percent,” he told Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow in an interview released on Feb. 10, referring to more than two dozen U.S. military strikes targeting drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

Trump suggested that the United States had struck boat-based smugglers first for strategic reasons.

“If you hit them on land, they go to the boats,” the president said. “Now we’re gonna hit them on land. We’re gonna hit them very hard on land.”

Trump’s comment comes as the U.S. military said it struck another drug-smuggling boat that left two dead and one survivor, the U.S. Southern Command stated in an X post on Feb. 9.

“Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Two narco-terrorists were killed and one survived the strike.”

The military recently struck another alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Southern Command wrote on social media that the vessel had been “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” Two suspected narco-terrorists were killed, it said.

The Trump administration has said that the strikes are needed to curb the flow of narcotics such as fentanyl into the United States.

At the same time, the U.S. military has seized several oil tankers suspected of trafficking sanctioned oil from Venezuela in recent weeks, most recently on Feb. 9. Officials confirmed the military pursued a vessel from the Caribbean Ocean and boarded it in the Indian Ocean.

In early January, a U.S. operation in Venezuela led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who was arrested on a range of charges, including drug trafficking. He later appeared in a New York court and pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who met with Trump earlier this month, has repeatedly denounced the U.S. strikes in the region. Democratic lawmakers have also been critical of the strikes, namely in December 2025 after video footage of a September 2025 strike that killed 11 suspected drug smugglers was released.

During the Fox Business interview with Kudlow, which mainly focused on the U.S. economy, Trump did not say when land strikes against suspected drug smugglers could occur or when they might be initiated.

Trump said in January that the U.S. military would start land strikes in Mexico that would target cartels because, he said, they are killing tens of thousands of people in the United States “every single year.”

The administration has already declared several major Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations alongside gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua.

“The cartels are running Mexico,” the president told Fox News’s Sean Hannity days after Maduro’s capture. “It’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.