US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Monday that the US military bombed two more boats that he claimed, without providing evidence, were carrying drugs in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
The strikes bring the total number of boats the US has bombed since early September to 20, including 10 that were targeted in the Caribbean and 10 that were hit in the Eastern Pacific. Hegseth said the latest bombing killed a total of six “narco-terrorists,” a term the Trump administration has used to justify extra-judicial executions for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the United States.
The six deaths bring the total number of people the US military has killed at sea to 75, according to numbers released by the Trump administration. “Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people,” Hegseth wrote on X.
Last week, President Trump repeated the false claim that for each boat the US military destroys, 25,000 American lives are saved. He has previously claimed the strikes were targeting fentanyl, which has caused the majority of drug overdoses in the US, but the Pentagon has told Congress that all of the boats it has hit were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Department of War has not provided any evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels are carrying.
The bombing campaign began targeting boats leaving Venezuela, which is not a producer of fentanyl or a transit point for fentanyl that arrives in the US. A report from The Washington Post cited officials from the US and other countries who said the route the US was targeting near Venezuela is mainly used to smuggle cocaine and marijuana to Trinidad and Tobago, and from there, cocaine is shipped to Europe and West Africa.
The bombing campaign has come under increasing scrutiny due to the lack of legal authority. During a recent congressional briefing on the strikes, the Pentagon admitted it didn’t know the identities of the people it has been killing. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), who attended the briefing, said the military campaign would still be illegal even if it were authorized by Congress.
The Trump administration has also continued its military buildup in the Caribbean aimed at unseating Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The Senate has failed to assert its war powers over the president, voting down a bill last week that would have blocked Trump from launching a war with Venezuela without congressional authorization.
