S. President Donald Trump started extensive maritime operations against suspected smugglers, according to the Associated Press. The United States military began executing airstrikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea in September 2025, as part of what the administration of President Donald Trump described as an effort to fight the flow of illicit drugs from Latin America to the US.
In October 2025, the strikes expanded to include vessels in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. As part of Operation Southern Spear, the US began deploying Navy warships and personnel to the Caribbean in mid-August 2025. Trump announced on 2 September 2025 that the US Navy had carried out the first airstrike in the Caribbean on a boat from Venezuela, killing all 11 people aboard, though Venezuelan sources said the first airstrike occurred on 1 September 2025.
US officials said that the airstrikes were a military operation against drug cartels in Latin America and that these military operations would continue. S. Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes, with intelligence confirming vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations.
According to a statement from the regional command Southcom on social media, the boat was moving along known routes for narcotics smuggling. The Trump administration has alleged, without producing public evidence, that the vessels were operated by groups it designated as narcoterrorists, including the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua and the Colombian far-left guerilla group National Liberation Army. S.
Southern Command said it conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations at the direction of the new leader of the Southern Command, Gen. Francis L. Donovan of the Marine Corps, who took over in January.
During the Trump administration's second term, the US intensified its focus on drug cartels, characterizing the smugglers as terrorists, with PBS News reporting that Trump was using the military to counter cartels he blamed for trafficking fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the US and for fueling violence in American cities. Despite these claims, the military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs, and the Trump administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing narcoterrorists. The Pentagon has refused to release the identities of those killed in the strikes since last fall or provide evidence of drugs on board.
Once again, the Pentagon provided no evidence the ship had been involved in ferrying drugs, though it posted video on social media showing an attack on a civilian vessel. The military posted a video on X that showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water. S.
began its attacks in the seas around Latin America in September. Sunday's attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls narcoterrorists in small vessels in early September. As of 25 March 2026, at least 163 people had been killed (including 3 who are missing and presumed dead) in at least 47 strikes on 48 vessels, while the latest killing brings the Pentagon’s claimed death toll in similar attacks to at least 157.
S. military continues to attack boats in the Caribbean that it believes smuggle drugs. Four people were killed when a boat was attacked in the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday.
An American attack on a boat that is said to have been used for smuggling narcotics led to four men being killed. US Southern Command announced on Friday that US forces carried out another lethal kinetic strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific which left one survivor and two people dead. After the strike, the military said that it immediately notified US Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for three people who survived the strike, and the coast guard said in a statement that one of its ships recovered two dead bodies and one survivor and turned them over to the Costa Rican coast guard.
Two people have been killed and one seriously injured in an American attack on a vessel along Costa Rica's coast, according to Costa Rican authorities. S. began targeting boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific in early September.
S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India. The strikes on suspected drug traffickers have been described as illegal by experts in international law, and experts, human rights groups and international bodies have said the killings are illegal under US and international law.
Killing survivors has been considered a textbook example of a war crime since 1945, when the victorious allies in the second world war prosecuted a Nazi U-boat crew for killing shipwreck survivors. The boat strikes drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said the follow-up strike was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.
S. in taking military action against drug-trafficking cartels and transnational gangs, which he said pose an unacceptable threat to the region's national security. The administration has been scrutinized in recent months over the strikes, including by Sen.
, who has raised concerns about killing people without due process and the possibility of killing innocent people, with the senator previously citing Coast Guard statistics that show a significant percentage of boats boarded on suspicion of drug trafficking are innocent. In 2025, the Republican-controlled US Senate twice rejected resolutions that would limit Trump's authority to continue military action against Venezuela or airstrikes against alleged drug vessels. Ecuador and the United States conducted military operations this past week against organized crime groups in the South American country.
As of 25 March 2026, the US had made its first strike on a land target within Venezuela. After beginning joint military operations with the Ecuadorian Armed Forces in the 2024-present Ecuador conflict, the United States declared an expansion of land strikes into Ecuador, claiming to strike a single target on 6 March 2026, with both countries originally asserting the strike was on a compound of FARC dissidents along the Colombia-Ecuador border. The New York Times subsequently reported the bombing, which did not directly involve the United States, actually targeted a dairy farm.
Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro repeatedly accused the US of seeking regime change, which some third-party sources agree with, and on 3 January 2026, Maduro was captured and flown out of the country by US forces. The Colombian and Venezuelan governments have accused the US of extrajudicial murder. The Pentagon appears to have changed strategy since the first attack in September when it ordered a follow-on strike to kill survivors.
The military posted a video on X that showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water. S. military has that targeted vessels were involved in drug smuggling, and how many innocent people have been killed or injured.
S. S. strikes since operations began shows conflicting numbers.
The identities and nationalities of those killed in the strikes have not been released by the Pentagon.