U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the U.S. military has carried out another strike against a Venezuelan drug cartel vessel that had been on its way to the United States, the second such strike in recent weeks.
He said three men were killed in the strike and no U.S. personnel were injured, adding that it occurred in international waters.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the target had been “positively identified [as] extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists,” adding that the cartels threaten U.S. national security, foreign policy and other interests.
The post included a nearly 30-second video, with marking “unclassified” on the top, which appeared to show a vessel on the water exploding and then on fire.
Trump provided no evidence for his assertion that the boat was carrying drugs — though he told reporters that U.S. authorities had obtained evidence.
“We have proof, all you have to do is look at the cargo that was … spattered all over the ocean,” Trump said in the Oval Office Monday afternoon, when asked about the steps authorities took to obtain proof of their allegations.
“Big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”
The U.S. president also said “we have recorded proof and evidence,” including knowledge of “what they had.”
Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Buildup in southern Caribbean
The latest strike comes amid a large U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean. Five U.S. F-35 aircraft were seen landing in Puerto Rico on Saturday after the Trump administration ordered 10 of the stealth fighters to join the buildup in the region.
There are also at least seven U.S. warships in the region, along with one nuclear-powered submarine.
When speaking with reporters on Monday, Trump suggested operations could be carried out on land against suspected drug smugglers.
“When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats,” Trump said. “But maybe by talking about it a little bit, it won’t happen.”
Earlier this month, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told sailors and marines on a warship off Puerto Rico that they were not deployed to the Caribbean for training but instead sent to the “front lines” of a critical counter-narcotics mission.
On Monday, Hegseth, in a post on X, suggested an expansive mission for the U.S. military against drug traffickers: “We will track them, kill them, and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere — at the times and places of our choosing.”
Prior strike on alleged drug boat
Earlier this month, the U.S. president announced a similar strike, off Venezuela, also involving what he alleged was a drug-carrying vessel.
The administration justified the earlier strike as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.
But several senators, Democrats and some Republicans have indicated dissatisfaction with the administration’s rationale and questioned the legality of the action. They view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part by using the military for law enforcement purposes.
Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California said he’s drafting a war powers resolution aimed at preventing U.S. troops from engaging in further strikes until formally authorized by Congress.
Schiff said he was concerned “these lawless killings are just putting us at risk” and could prompt another country to target U.S. forces without proper justification.
“I don’t want to see us get into some war with Venezuela because the president is just blowing ships willy-nilly out of the water,” Schiff said.
Human rights groups have also raised concerns that the strikes flout international law. The White House has offered scant information about how the operations came together or the legal authorities under which they were carried out.
“Let us be clear — this may be an extrajudicial execution, which is murder,” said Daphne Eviatar, who directs Amnesty International USA’s Security with Human Rights Program. “There is absolutely no legal justification for this military strike.”
The Trump administration has claimed self-defence as a legal justification for the first strike, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arguing the drug cartels “pose an immediate threat” to the nation.
U.S. officials said that strike targeted Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. And they indicated more military strikes on drug targets would be coming as the U.S. looks to “wage war” on cartels.
Trump did not specify whether Tren de Aragua was also the target of Monday’s strike.
The Trump administration has railed specifically against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for the scourge of illegal drugs in U.S. communities.
Maduro slams U.S.
Maduro earlier on Monday lashed out at the U.S. government, accusing the Trump administration of using drug-trafficking accusations as an excuse for a military operation whose intentions are “to intimidate and seek regime change” in the South American country.
Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Rubio reiterated that the U.S. doesn’t see Maduro as the rightful leader of Venezuela but as the head of a drug cartel. Rubio has consistently depicted Venezuela as a vestige of communist ideology in the Western hemisphere.
“We’re not going to have a cartel, operating or masquerading as a government, operating in our own hemisphere,” Rubio said.
Following the first military strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, the U.S.’s chief diplomat said Trump was “going to use the U.S. military and all the elements of American power to target cartels who are targeting America.”
The Associated Press and others have reported that the boat had turned around and was heading back to shore when it was struck. But Rubio on Monday said he didn’t know if that’s accurate.
“What needs to start happening is some of these boats need to get blown up,” Rubio said. “We can’t live in a world where all of a sudden they do a U-turn and so we can’t touch them anymore.”