The U.S. military conducted its eighth strike against an alleged drug-trafficking vessel Tuesday night, marking the first such operation in the Pacific Ocean and expanding President Donald Trump’s controversial anti-narcotics campaign beyond Caribbean waters. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed Wednesday that two individuals aboard the vessel were killed in the operation conducted in international waters off South America’s Pacific coast.
The strike brings the total death toll from U.S. attacks on suspected drug boats to at least 34 people since the campaign began on September 2. All seven previous strikes occurred in the Caribbean Sea, targeting vessels the administration claims were operated by designated terrorist organizations involved in narcotics trafficking.
Geographic expansion and operational details
“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific,” Hegseth announced on social media. He added that the vessel “was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling” and “was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route.”
The operation represents a significant expansion of the administration’s approach to what it has characterized as a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. According to a leaked memo to Congress, the Trump administration has determined it is engaged in this conflict against drug-trafficking groups it has designated as terrorist organizations.
“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people. There will be no refuge or forgiveness—only justice.”
— Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Hegseth released a short video showing a small boat loaded with brown packages navigating through water before exploding and drifting in flames.
Escalating diplomatic tensions
The military campaign has intensified diplomatic conflicts with regional allies, particularly Colombia and Venezuela. Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of committing “murder,” claiming that strikes in September and October killed Colombian citizens, including what he described as a fisherman.
Trump responded by calling Petro an “illegal drug leader” and threatening to cut off U.S. aid to Colombia. The president announced Sunday he was ending “large scale payments and subsidies” to the South American nation and indicated that tariffs were likely.
The expansion into Pacific waters near Colombia’s coast appears designed to target vessels departing from the world’s primary cocaine-producing region. The move into the Pacific marks a dramatic shift in how the U.S. military has allocated resources toward combating illicit drugs, an area traditionally handled by the Coast Guard using non-lethal interdiction methods.
Congressional and legal opposition
The military operations have drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers across the political spectrum who question their legality under both U.S. and international law. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) emerged as a prominent critic, arguing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “when you kill someone if you’re not in war, and not in a declared war, you really need to know someone’s name, at least.”
Paul highlighted Coast Guard statistics showing approximately 25% of vessels boarded at sea contain no drugs, raising concerns about potential civilian casualties. “If our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world in which 25% of the people might be innocent,” he said.
A 2024 Coast Guard fiscal year report confirmed that the agency found drugs in about 73% of cases when boarding suspected vessels, with approximately 27% of interceptions yielding no narcotics.
Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the lack of transparency around who was being targeted and why was unprecedented in his experience. “All they’ve said is, these people are part of a drug-running gang and we killed them,” Smith told The New Republic.
Administration’s legal rationale
The Trump administration has not provided a detailed legal justification for treating drug trafficking as grounds for military action, though it cites the approximately 100,000 annual American overdose deaths as a rationale for treating cartel operations as armed attacks requiring self-defense.
In documents to Congress, the administration has characterized those killed in the strikes as “unlawful combatants” and asserted that the United States is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with designated terrorist organizations. The memo states that Trump “has directed the Department of War to conduct operations against them in accordance with the law of armed conflict.”
Legal scholars have challenged this framework. “Simply giving an existing problem a new name doesn’t change the problem – nor does it give the U.S. president or military new legal authorities to kill civilians,” wrote Tess Bridgeman, a former Navy attorney now serving as an associate professor at Emory School of Law.
The U.S. has deployed approximately 10,000 troops along with military aircraft and naval vessels to the Caribbean to support the operation.
Evidence and accountability concerns
The administration has not provided evidence to lawmakers that recent military strikes were justified or that the targeted vessels actually contained drugs. Trump has claimed intelligence confirms the boats were carrying narcotics, but no physical evidence or documentation has been made public.
In one case, the administration seized two survivors from a strike and announced plans to return them to their home countries rather than detain them, sidestepping potential legal challenges about the campaign.
Family members of at least one victim, a Trinidadian fisherman allegedly killed in a strike, have denied he had any involvement with drug smuggling.
UN experts have suggested the strikes may constitute “extrajudicial executions” under international law. “The characterization of those killed in the U.S. strike as narco-terrorists does not make them legitimate military targets,” said Professor Michael Becker from Trinity College Dublin.
Regional implications
The strikes have prompted unified concern among Caribbean leaders, with CARICOM issuing a call for maintaining the region as a “Zone of Peace.” The U.S. Embassy in Trinidad and Tobago issued an unprecedented security warning Saturday advising American citizens to avoid all U.S. government facilities through the holiday weekend due to heightened tensions.
Venezuela’s government has accused the U.S. of violating international law and the UN charter, stating that the aim of U.S. actions is “to create a pretext for an intervention to alter the regime in Venezuela, ultimately seeking control over all of the country’s resources.”
Most illegal drugs entering the U.S.—and almost all fentanyl—do not originate from or transit through the Caribbean, but rather come along the Pacific coast or overland through Mexico, according to U.S. government and UN experts.
