WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said the U.S. military again targeted a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three aboard the vessel.
“The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the U.S.,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the strike. “These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests.”
Trump said the strike was carried out Monday, nearly two weeks after another military strike on what the Trump administration says was a drug-carrying speedboat from Venezuela that killed 11.
The Trump 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 their 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 because the military was used for law enforcement purposes.
The Trump administration has claimed self-defense as a legal justification for the first strike, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio arguing the drug cartels “pose an immediate threat” to the nation.
U.S. officials said the strike early this month 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 Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported strike.
The Trump administration has railed specifically against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for the scourge of illegal drugs in U.S. communities.
Maduro during a press conference 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.
Maduro also repudiated what he described as a weekend operation in which 18 Marines raided a Venezuelan fishing boat in the Caribbean.
“What were they looking for? Tuna? What were they looking for? A kilo of snapper? Who gave the order in Washington for a missile destroyer to send 18 armed Marines to raid a tuna fishing vessel?” he said. “They were looking for a military incident. If the tuna fishing boys had any kind of weapons and used weapons while in Venezuelan jurisdiction, it would have been the military incident that the warmongers, extremists who want a war in the Caribbean, are seeking.”
Speaking to Fox News earlier Monday, Rubio reiterated that the U.S. doesn’t see Maduro as the rightful leader of Venezuela but as 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, America’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.”
AP 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.”
