The U.S. military has conducted its 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday, blaming the Tren de Aragua gang for operating the vessel and leaving six people dead in the Caribbean.
In a social media post, Hegseth said the strike occurred overnight, and it marks the second time the Trump administration has tied one of its operations to the gang, which originated in a Venezuelan prison.
The pace of the strikes has quickened in recent days from one every few weeks in September when they first began to three this week. Two of the strikes this week were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area in which the military was launching attacks and where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.
In a 20-second black and white video of the strike posted to social media, a small boat can be seen apparently sitting motionless on the water when a long thin projectile descends on it, triggering an explosion. The video ends before the blast dies down enough for the remains of the boat to be seen again.
Hegseth said the strike happened in international waters and boasted that it was the first one conducted at night.
“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in the post. “Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”
The strike also came hours after the U.S. military flew a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday. The flight was just the most recent move in what has been an unusually large military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela that has raised speculation that President Donald Trump could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino has told his military leaders that the U.S. government knows the drug-trafficking accusations used to support the recent actions in the Caribbean are false, with its true intent being to “force a regime change” in the South American country.
Hegseth’s remarks around the strikes have recently begun to draw a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug traffickers.
When reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would request Congress issue a declaration of war against the cartels, he said that wasn’t the plan.
“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be like, dead,” Trump said during a roundtable at the White House with homeland security officials.
Lawmakers from both major political parties have expressed concerns about Trump ordering the military actions without receiving authorization from Congress or providing many details. Democrats have insisted the strikes violate international law.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this week that “expanding the geography simply expands the lawlessness and the recklessness in the use of the American military without seeming legal or practical justification.”
Trump this month declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with them.
Despite the concerns from some lawmakers, the Republican-controlled Senate has voted down a Democratic-sponsored war powers resolution that would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes.
