U.S. Military Strikes on Alleged Drug Traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific

Details

Beginning on September 2, 2025, the U.S. military under President Donald Trump's direction began conducting airstrikes on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean, claiming they were carrying drugs to the United States. The campaign, formally named "Operation Southern Spear" on November 13, 2025, has continued and expanded for nearly ten months. As of late June 2026, at least 221 people had been killed in more than 60 strikes, with attacks continuing into the summer even as U.S. military attention was consumed by the war in Iran. The operation has been widely condemned by legal experts, human rights organizations, and international bodies as constituting extrajudicial killings in violation of both U.S. and international law.

Background

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order designating drug cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations" (FTOs), declaring a national emergency to address what his administration characterized as an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States. The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was designated an FTO, along with at least 19 new groups in 2025 alone—representing over one-third of all FTO designations in the past 20 years.

The Trump administration has argued that the United States is engaged in a formal "non-international armed conflict" with these designated narco-terrorist organizations, and that alleged traffickers are "unlawful combatants" who may be killed with military force. This legal framework, articulated in a classified Office of Legal Counsel memo, has been fiercely criticized by outside legal experts.

Timeline of Strikes

For a comprehensive timeline of the early campaign, see PBS NewsHour/Associated Press: "A timeline of U.S. military escalation against Venezuela leading to Maduro's capture". Key events:

January–February 2025: Trump signs an executive order enabling designation of drug cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations." By February, eight Latin American crime organizations receive FTO designations—a label typically reserved for politically-motivated groups like al-Qaeda, not profit-driven criminal enterprises. Notably, U.S. intelligence agencies disputed Trump's claim that Maduro's government was coordinating with Tren de Aragua.

August 2025: Three guided-missile destroyers deploy to waters off Venezuela, beginning a naval buildup that would grow to include amphibious assault ships, F-35 fighters in Puerto Rico, and a cruise-missile-equipped submarine—approximately 6,000 personnel initially.

September 2 – Strike 1: Eleven people killed on a boat Trump claimed was operated by Tren de Aragua. Two survivors of the initial strike were killed in a follow-up attack (see "Double-Tap" section below).

September 15–19 – Strikes 2-3: At least three more killed. When asked for evidence the boats carried drugs, Trump claimed cocaine and fentanyl were visible in the water; no images were released.

October 2: Trump declares cartels "unlawful combatants" and asserts the U.S. is in "armed conflict" with them.

October 3–29 – Strikes 4-14: Eleven more strikes kill approximately 40 people, including an expansion to the Eastern Pacific. On October 16, two survivors are repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia rather than prosecuted—avoiding questions about their legal status. Senate Republicans vote down legislation requiring congressional authorization.

October 15: Trump confirms CIA authorization for covert operations inside Venezuela.

October 24: Hegseth orders the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the region.

October 31: UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk demands the U.S. halt strikes to prevent "extrajudicial killing."

November 1–16 – Strikes 15-21: Seven more strikes kill approximately 25 people. The Ford arrives on November 16, bringing total personnel to around 12,000 on nearly a dozen ships. Hegseth formally names the campaign "Operation Southern Spear." Senate Republicans again reject war powers legislation.

December 2025 – Strikes 22-35: More than a dozen strikes kill dozens of additional people. The U.S. seizes Venezuelan oil tankers and Trump announces a blockade of "sanctioned oil tankers." House Republicans reject Democratic war powers resolutions. On December 26, the U.S. announces its first strike on a land target inside Venezuela—a marine facility allegedly used for loading drug boats.

January 3, 2026: U.S. forces capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in "Operation Absolute Resolve," flying them to New York to face drug trafficking charges. Maduro has since pleaded not guilty.

February–March 2026: Strikes continue even as the U.S. enters war with Iran. On March 6, the U.S. and Ecuador announce an expansion of land strikes into Ecuadorian territory. The strike was initially described as targeting a compound of FARC dissidents along the Colombia-Ecuador border; The New York Times subsequently reported the bombing actually struck a dairy farm.

April–June 2026: The pace of maritime strikes accelerates again. By late March at least 163 people had been killed in 47 strikes; the toll passed 200 by late May and reached at least 221 across more than 60 vessels by June 21, 2026. Several recent strikes have left survivors, with the Coast Guard activating search-and-rescue operations in some cases.

The September 2 "Double-Tap" Strike

The first strike drew intense scrutiny following The Washington Post's November 28 report that Defense Secretary Hegseth gave a verbal directive before the operation. According to two officials with direct knowledge: "The order was to kill everybody."

After SEAL Team 6 struck the boat, surveillance footage showed two survivors clinging to the smoldering wreckage. Admiral Frank M. Bradley, commander of Joint Special Operations Command, ordered a second strike that killed the survivors.

Disputed accounts: Hegseth initially denied the Washington Post report as "fake news." After the White House confirmed a second strike occurred, the administration insisted it was done "in self-defense" to ensure the boat was destroyed. Hegseth claimed he had watched the first strike live but left for another meeting and did not "personally see" the survivors—what he called the "fog of war."

On December 4, Admiral Bradley provided closed-door briefings to Congress. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) told reporters afterward that "Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all."

Democrats who viewed the classified footage offered a starkly different assessment. Representative Adam Smith, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, described what he saw: "basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water—until the missiles come and kill them."

Hegseth refused to publicly release the unedited video on December 16, even as questions mounted in Congress. As of June 2026, lawmakers were still demanding the unedited footage.

Who Was Killed

For months the Pentagon refused to identify any of the people killed in the strikes or release evidence that the vessels carried drugs—a refusal that has continued into 2026.

In May 2026, The Guardian published an investigation that identified a number of the victims. It found no evidence of involvement in drug trafficking by many of those identified. The report found that the victims came overwhelmingly from poor families in Latin America and the Caribbean. While some "may have had some involvement in drug trafficking" and some "fit the profile" of people who turned to trafficking as a survival mechanism amid economic collapse, others had no connection to the drug trade at all. The Guardian had earlier reported in November 2025 that governments and families of the dead said many were civilians—primarily fishers.

Legal Analysis

Extrajudicial Killings Under Human Rights Law

The consensus among international law experts is that the strikes constitute extrajudicial killings—unlawful killings by state authorities without legal justification or due process.

Human Rights Watch stated: "The deliberate killing of criminal suspects under any other circumstances, and certainly as a deterrent or simply as a convenient alternative to arrest and prosecution, is a grave human rights violation."

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called on the United States to halt the strikes to prevent "extrajudicial killing," stating on October 31 that "none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others."

A group of UN human rights experts warned on October 21 that the strikes "appear to be unlawful killings carried out by order of a Government, without judicial or legal process allowing due process of law."

No Legitimate Armed Conflict

Legal experts broadly reject the administration's claim that it is engaged in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels. Professor Michael Schmitt of the U.S. Naval War College explained: "I don't believe the U.S. is in a legitimate armed conflict with drug cartels... that would have to be committing a high level of violence against the country itself."

Stanford law professor Tom Dannenbaum stated: "The United States is not currently operating in a context of armed conflict... For that reason, this is not a context in which war crimes apply. Instead, all of the strikes qualify as murder in violation of domestic criminal law, and extrajudicial killings in violation of international human rights law."

War Crimes / Crimes Against Humanity

Lawfare reported that the strikes likely constitute crimes against humanity under international criminal law, analogous to the conduct for which former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the International Criminal Court in March 2025 for extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers.

The Former JAGs Working Group—an organization of former military judge advocates—issued a statement condemning the reported "kill everybody" order as "war crimes, murder, or both," noting that orders to give "no quarter" and "double-tap" targets to kill survivors "are clearly illegal under international law."

The Geneva Conventions and Hors de Combat

The Geneva Conventions require that shipwrecked persons be "respected and protected." The Department of Defense Law of War Manual explicitly states that helpless, shipwrecked survivors are not lawful targets. The Hague regulations forbid orders declaring that "no quarter" will be given.

Even if an armed conflict existed, Professor Schmitt stated: "I can't imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water. That is clearly unlawful."

Violation of UN Charter and Law of the Sea

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea prohibits military attacks against shipping on the high seas absent legal justification. States may stop, visit, and search unregistered vessels, but the proper remedy is detention and trial—not missile strikes. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits "the use of force against the territorial integrity" of any state.

Constitutional Concerns and War Powers

Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the president must notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing forces into hostilities and cannot sustain military operations beyond 60 days without congressional authorization. The campaign has continued for nearly a year without a formal authorization for the use of military force (AUMF).

Senator Jack Reed, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called the strikes an "outrageous violation of the law and a dangerous assault on our Constitution," stating: "No president can secretly wage war or carry out unjustified killings—that is authoritarianism, not democracy." The Republican-controlled Senate has twice rejected resolutions that would have limited Trump's authority to continue the strikes.

Libertarian and Conservative Criticism

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has been the most outspoken Republican critic. He called the strikes "extrajudicial killings" comparable to "what China does, to what Iran does with drug dealers":

"When you kill someone, you should know, if you're not at war, not in a declared war, you really need to know someone's name at least. You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. So all of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime."

Paul noted that when the Coast Guard boards suspected drug boats, approximately 25% don't have drugs: "If you have a 25% error rate, people have to decide, well, do you think killing people with a 25% error rate is okay? ... Civilized people don't do this." In January 2026 he added: "I look at my colleagues who say they're pro-life... but they don't give a s--- about these people in the boats. Are they terrible people in the boats? I don't know. They're probably poor people in Venezuela and Colombia."

The Cato Institute's Jeffrey Singer told NPR: "I don't know how you could equate smugglers, selling something illegal to people who want to buy it, as an act of war. Suspected criminal drug dealers should be arrested and put on trial—not killed in military strikes."

Core libertarian arguments against the strikes include that the administration has not publicly identified any of the people killed or provided evidence the boats carried drugs; that the strikes occur in international waters thousands of miles from U.S. shores against boats posing no imminent threat; and that drug trafficking, even if proven, is a criminal matter to be handled through established Coast Guard interdiction and bilateral agreements.

Vice President JD Vance's Comments and Backlash

When critics noted on September 6 that killing civilians without due process constitutes a war crime, Vice President JD Vance responded on X: "I don't give a shit what you call it."

Senator Paul responded: "What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial."

On September 17, Vance joked at a Michigan rally about the strikes, recounting a conversation with Defense Secretary Hegseth: "You know what he said? 'We don't see any of these drug boats coming into our country. They've completely stopped.' And I said, 'I know why. I would stop too. Hell, I wouldn't go fishing right now in that area of the world.'" Critics responded that the remark was essentially an admission that the U.S. might be killing innocent fishermen.

Drug Trafficking Data: Venezuela's Actual Role

On November 4, Defense Secretary Hegseth posted on X that the Pentagon would "find and terminate EVERY vessel with the intention of trafficking drugs to America to poison our citizens." Authoritative data from U.S. government agencies undercuts this rationale.

Venezuela: A Transit Country, Not a Producer

According to the State Department's 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Venezuela functions primarily as a transit point for cocaine, not a production hub. The cocaine originates in Colombia, which accounts for over 70% of global production. Per the DEA's National Drug Threat Assessment, only about 8% of U.S.-bound cocaine departed through the Caribbean corridor; the vast majority—74%—reaches the United States via Eastern Pacific routes through Mexico and Central America.

Route	Share of U.S.-Bound Cocaine	Primary Transit Countries
Eastern Pacific	74%	Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico
Western Caribbean	16%	Colombia, Central America
Caribbean (Venezuela)	8%	Venezuela, Caribbean Islands

Source: DEA National Drug Threat Assessment

The UNODC World Drug Report estimates only about 5% of Colombian cocaine passes through Venezuela, much of it headed to the Caribbean or Europe rather than the United States. Notably, InSight Crime reported that despite Maduro's ouster, the Chavista regime he headed remains in place, meaning "state-embedded drug trafficking, often described as the Cartel of the Suns, is also largely untouched."

Venezuela Has No Role in the Fentanyl Crisis

Multiple authoritative sources confirm Venezuela has no significant involvement in fentanyl production or trafficking. The State Department's INCSR identifies Mexico as "the only significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States." The DEA identifies Mexican cartels using Chinese precursors as the principal source and does not mention Venezuela in its fentanyl analysis. The UNODC identifies no fentanyl production in Venezuela or anywhere in South America.

U.S. Overdose Deaths Were Already Falling

The U.S. overdose crisis is overwhelmingly driven by synthetic opioids (fentanyl), not cocaine—and fentanyl deaths were already declining sharply before the boat strikes began. According to CDC provisional data, overdose deaths fell nearly 27% in 2024 versus 2023, from roughly 110,000 to 80,400. The decline began in January 2024, under President Biden, and continued throughout the year. As The New York Times reported, monthly fentanyl deaths fell from over 6,000 in May 2023 to approximately 2,700 by September 2024—a decline "unlike any seen in more than 50 years of recorded drug overdose mortality data." The first boat strike occurred on September 2, 2025, months after the decline was already well underway. Researchers credit expanded naloxone access, increased treatment, and changes in the drug supply—not military action in the Caribbean.

Year	Total Overdose Deaths	Synthetic Opioid (Fentanyl) Deaths
2023	~110,000	72,776
2024	~80,400	~54,700
Change	-27%	-25%

Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics

The Math Does Not Add Up

Trump has repeatedly claimed that each boat destroyed "saves 25,000 American lives." PolitiFact found the claim baseless: there were roughly 68,000 U.S. overdose deaths from January 2024 to December 2025, so if Trump's figure were accurate, five boat strikes would have saved about double the number of people who die from overdoses in a year. Drug experts also note there is no way to know how many lives, if any, a given seizure prevents, and that even were each boat carrying 25,000 lethal doses, destroying it would not translate into 25,000 lives saved.

Effectiveness of the Campaign

Nine months into the operation, a body of evidence indicates the strikes have not measurably reduced the flow of cocaine into the United States. A New York Times investigation published in May 2026—based on street prices, overdose data, sample purity, and border seizures—found that cocaine, the top drug smuggled out of South America, remained as available in much of the United States as it was before the campaign began. The costs, meanwhile, had climbed to $4.7 billion, according to Brown University's Costs of War project, encompassing AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, F-35 fighter jets, guided-missile destroyers, and roughly 15,000 military personnel.

Public health researchers pointed to several indicators, none moving in the direction expected if the strikes were constraining supply:

• Prices: Street cocaine held between $60 and $100 per gram in many U.S. cities, roughly unchanged from before the strikes, according to University of North Carolina addiction scientist Nabarun Dasgupta.
• Purity: The average number of adulterants in cocaine samples ran 1.3 to 1.5 in 2026, versus 1.4 to 1.6 for much of 2025—no sign of the dilution expected under a supply squeeze. "It's clearly not going in the expected direction," Dasgupta said.
• Seizures: U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 47,808 pounds of cocaine in the eight months after the strikes began, more than the 43,227 pounds seized in the eight months before—suggesting undiminished trafficking volume.

"Cocaine remains highly available, highly prevalent and relatively inexpensive," said Dr. Carl Latkin, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University, who called the strategy both illegal and ineffective and compared it to "bombing a handful of McDonald's in Dallas, Texas, and claiming that you've made America healthy again." Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America told the Times: "They're not moving the needle at all. Is that worth killing all these people?"

The scale of interdiction is dwarfed by production. U.S. officials noted that Coast Guard cocaine seizures reached 511,000 pounds in 2025, more than triple the annual average—but the United Nations estimates Colombia alone produces roughly 5.7 million pounds of cocaine a year, about eleven times that amount. Analysts and the Times reporting found traffickers adapting by shifting to overland routes through Central America and to cocaine concealed in cargo aboard container ships, absorbing occasional small-boat losses.

The commander overseeing the campaign acknowledged its limits. In March 2026 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, head of U.S. Southern Command, was asked by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) what evidence showed the campaign was degrading cartel operations. Donovan responded: "I couldn't provide you [with] measures of effectiveness for the current effort." While he said trafficking groups had changed their patterns, he added that "the boat strikes aren't the answer" and, in later testimony, that boat strikes would be "one of the main tools, and probably not the most effective." Defense Secretary Hegseth, by contrast, maintained on social media that the strikes were "highly effective" at stemming the flow of lethal drugs.

Overdose data further complicate the administration's rationale. U.S. overdose deaths peaked near 110,000 in 2022 and fell to roughly 68,000 for the twelve months ending November 2025. Experts attribute the decline chiefly to wider availability of overdose-reversal medication and a shift among users from injecting to smoking opioids. Fentanyl deaths have fallen faster than cocaine-only deaths, and around the time the strikes began, the rate of decline in cocaine-involved deaths plateaued. Lori Ann Post, director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, said restricting cocaine supply could in principle reduce cocaine deaths, but added: "I still do not see evidence of a cocaine supply shock reflected in overdose deaths." The vast majority of cocaine-involved deaths also involve other drugs; a CDC study found only 6.3% of such deaths over a three-year period involved cocaine alone.

Regime Change as True Objective

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in November that the strikes were aimed at forcing regime change in Venezuela: "He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle." This admission contradicted the administration's public counter-narcotics justification.

On December 26, 2025, the U.S. announced its first strike on a land target within Venezuela. On January 3, 2026, U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro in "Operation Absolute Resolve," flying him to New York, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges. In March 2026, the campaign expanded again, with land strikes into Ecuador.

Oversight and Accountability

In May 2026, the Pentagon's Inspector General announced it would evaluate whether the military followed its established targeting framework—the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle—when carrying out the strikes. The inspector general's office specified that the evaluation is focused on process, not on the legality of the strikes themselves.

Earlier, Senator Roger Wicker, Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, announced an investigation into the "kill everybody" report, vowing "vigorous oversight," while most Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader John Thune, continued to support the campaign. House Democrats on the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence committees demanded a vote on a resolution to block further strikes; Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) called Hegseth a "war criminal."

International Response

Human Rights Watch called on U.S. partner nations—including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands—to publicly object and ensure they are not complicit through intelligence sharing. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed "deep concern" on December 2.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated: "A head of state is not there to kill people, you're there to arrest them." Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of murdering Colombian nationals, identifying one victim as fisherman Alejandro Carranza; Trump responded by calling Petro an "illegal drug leader" and cutting U.S. aid to Colombia. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot criticized the operations as violating international law, and Pope Leo XIV called for dialogue.

Public Opinion

Polling has been mixed and has shifted over the course of the campaign. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll from October 1-2 found 71% supported destroying drug boats from South America. A CBS News poll showed a closer split, with 53% approving and 47% disapproving, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll from November found 51% support. Support has tended to be highest for the abstract concept of destroying drug boats and lower once the killing of unidentified, unconvicted individuals and survivors is specified.

Comparison to Duterte

International law experts have drawn comparisons to Rodrigo Duterte's drug war in the Philippines. The International Criminal Court arrested Duterte in March 2025 for crimes against humanity arising from extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers. International war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody stated: "The former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is right now facing trial in The Hague at the International Criminal Court for doing exactly the same thing that President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have done here, murdering suspected drug dealers without trial."

Assessment

The boat-strike campaign represents an unprecedented expansion of military force into what has traditionally been a law enforcement matter. Nearly ten months in, the United States has killed more than 220 people in international waters and through land strikes in Venezuela and Ecuador—without congressional authorization, without publicly identifying the dead, and without producing evidence that the people killed were drug traffickers. A Guardian investigation that identified some of the victims found no trafficking connection for many of them. The stated rationale—stemming the flow of drugs and overdose deaths—is undercut by government data showing Venezuela's minor role in cocaine transit, its absence from the fentanyl supply chain, and a steep overdose decline that began well before the strikes. Nine months in, prices, purity, and border-seizure data show no measurable dent in the U.S. cocaine supply, and the officer running the campaign has told Congress he cannot document its effectiveness. The most consequential outcomes so far have been the capture of Maduro and a durable precedent for executive killing without due process. Legal experts across the political spectrum—from former Bush administration officials to UN human rights investigators to libertarian Republicans—have concluded that the strikes violate international law, U.S. constitutional law, and basic principles of due process. Whether any accountability follows remains the open question.