US Southern Command said on Monday that its forces blew up another alleged drug-running boat as the Trump administration continues the extrajudicial executions at sea.
SOUTHCOM said the vessel was targeted in the Caribbean Sea, and it offered no evidence to back up its claim that the boat was carrying drugs, something the Pentagon has never done for the more than 50 boats it has bombed since the campaign started in September 2025.
Several accounts from survivors and family members of victims of other strikes that were reported by Drop Site News suggest the US has previously targeted fishing boats that weren’t running drugs.
According to a count from The Intercept, since the campaign began, the US military has destroyed 57 boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean and has killed at least 188 people. All of the dead were civilians since they were operating civilian vessels, were not engaged in combat, and didn’t pose any threat to the US at the time of the strikes.
Intercept reporter Nick Turse has also found that the bombing campaign against civilian boats has done nothing to stop the flow of drugs to the US, contradicting President Trump’s clearly false claim that drugs “entering our country by sea are down 97%” since the strikes started.
According to numbers from the US Customs and Border Protection, cocaine seizures at US borders and along the coast have actually increased since the bombing campaign started.
“Cocaine seized at all U.S. borders in the seven months before the strikes began was 38,000 pounds. In the seven months since, it’s 44,000 pounds — 6,000 pounds more,” Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at Washington Office on Latin America, told Turse.
