Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the U.S. struck a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea, marking at least the third time this week that the U.S. has attacked a vessel it says was involved in drug trafficking.
“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X. “Six male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters—and was the first strike at night. All six terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”
Hegseth said that this vessel belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, which the Trump administration has named a designated terrorist organization, and was hit in the Caribbean.
Earlier this week, Hegseth said he had launched a lethal strike against vessels allegedly carrying drugs to the U.S. in the eastern Pacific Ocean. In that military action, the Defense Secretary said, three male “narco-terrorists” were killed.
In his post announcing that strike, he used similar language to Friday’s post, comparing the alleged drug traffickers to the terror group Al Qaeda.
President Donald Trump has been supportive of the military strikes in recent weeks, claiming that every boat that “we knock out” is saving American lives.
“Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough;’ It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people,” Trump said in a press conference at the White House last week.
While fentanyl is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths every year in the United States, it is primarily smuggled in hard-to-detect amounts over the U.S.-Mexico border by land through legal ports of entry, according to experts and government reports, including the bipartisan Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking.
During a roundtable event with Cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday, Trump and Hegseth each touted the success of the recent strikes, with Hegseth promising more.
“We will find you, we will map your networks, we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,” Hegseth said at the event. “And you’ve seen that evidence in the maritime domain, whether it’s in the Caribbean or in the Pacific with the last two strikes. We know exactly who these people are. We know what networks they work with, what foreign terrorist organizations they’re a part of; we know where they’re going, where they originated from, what they’re carrying.”
The president also spoke about the strikes on vessels at the event, explaining why his administration isn’t just capturing the alleged drug traffickers on board and seizing the product they’re carrying.
“But we’ve been capturing these boats for years, and they get back into the system, they do it again and again and again, and they don’t fear that, they have no fear,” he told reporters.
Asked whether Trump would go to Congress to ask for a declaration of war to authorize the ongoing strikes against boats, the president declined to do so.
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.”
“We’re going to kill them,” Trump added. “They’re going to be, like, dead.”
Cracking down on drug smuggling and reducing deaths from fentanyl overdoses was a key campaign promise for Trump last year.
He also promised to carry out mass deportations, beginning with what he deemed “the worst of the worst” migrants in the U.S. illegally.
Earlier this month, his administration also claimed to be in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which he has repeatedly claimed are responsible for thousands of deaths in the U.S. every year.