US kills 3 on suspected drug boat, as senators want to watch uncensored video of strikes
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The US military attacked a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, killing three people, as the Trump administration continued its crackdown on suspected drug traffickers in Latin America.
The latest attack brings the number of people killed by US military boats to at least 211 since the Trump administration began targeting what it calls “narcoterrorists” last September.
Like many military statements about strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, the US Southern Command said it was targeting suspected drug smugglers on known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the ship was carrying drugs.
A video posted on X shows the boat running through the water before it was hit and burst into flames.
President Donald Trump has said the US is “in an armed conflict” with Latin American cartels and has justified the attack as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and the drug overdoses that are killing Americans. But his administration and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have provided little evidence to support their allegations of narcoterrorist killings.
Critics have questioned the full legality of the boat strikes and their effectiveness, in part because the deadly drug fentanyl is often sold in the US from Mexico, where it is manufactured with chemicals from China and India.
General Francis Donovan, who heads the Southern Command of the US military, in testimony to Congress in March that the attack on boats “will be one of the main tools, and perhaps not the most successful,” in stopping the flow of drugs in North America.
Insight Crime, a think tank that tracks the flow of illegal drugs around the world, said in an April report that while the operation has disrupted some routes, its impact on cocaine trafficking is questionable.
The UN, experts doubt the legitimacy
The senators on Thursday demanded that the Pentagon release “unedited video” of the strikes.
According to reports from both Politico and the Washington Post on Thursday, several senators are vowing to fight over the next military spending bill. The senators are reportedly threatening to cut Hegseth’s travel budget, out of frustration over the Pentagon’s lack of transparency regarding submarine strikes in Latin America, and the late February US airstrikes that hit a girls’ school in Iran.
The first US military strike in early September drew some concern from some lawmakers and those who study military law. Two of the men on the boat survived the initial attack and nine others, and were clinging to the wreckage when the ship was hit again, died.
The Trump administration is facing renewed pressure from some Republican lawmakers who want to reveal the controversial second strike on a Venezuelan drug boat in the Caribbean.
The White House confirmed the subsequent strike, insisting it was carried out “defensively” to ensure the boat was destroyed and in accordance with the rules of conflict.
But some legal experts said the second strike to kill the survivors was illegal under any circumstances, armed conflict or not.
Also, some experts are worried about the strike because a drug-carrying ship will usually have less than 11 people on board.
It calls for an investigation
Volker Türk, the UN human rights commissioner, has called for an investigation into the strikes, while independent legal experts appointed by the UN say the use of such lethal force violates international maritime law and amounts to “extrajudicial killings.”
The Pentagon’s watchdog said in May it plans to look into whether the US military has followed established guidelines when conducting strikes. However, the analysis focused more on what is known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and not on the legality of the strikes, the inspector general’s office said.
The first few strikes starting in September focused on ships in the waters between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago. But they soon spread to other Caribbean waters.
A number of survivors of many strikes were quickly returned to countries such as Ecuador and Colombia, instead of being held in prison or receiving more information about drug trafficking.
Although the flow of dangerous drugs to the US has been cited as a legitimate basis for the strikes, Trump recently pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández just one year into a 45-year sentence in a US prison for helping drug traffickers affiliated with the Mexican Sinaloa company move cocaine to the US.
Trump framed the prosecution of the right-wing Honduran as politically motivated and a “set-up” of the Justice Department in the administration that preceded Joe Biden, although the origins of the prosecution predate the Biden era. Also, Tony Hernández, the politician’s brother, is still in custody in the US on similar charges.
