President Trump said on Tuesday that the United States had carried out a strike against a boat carrying drugs and killed 11 “terrorists,” the administration’s latest military escalation in Mr. Trump’s war against Venezuelan drug cartels that he has blamed for bringing fentanyl into the country.
Mr. Trump offered few details about the strike during his news conference on Tuesday, but Defense Department officials and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it had targeted a boat being operated by a “designated narco-terrorist organization.”
Late Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trump posted more details on the social media site Truth Social. “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists,” Mr. Trump wrote. He said the strike “occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States.”
No American troops were harmed in the operation, he said.
Mr. Trump’s post was accompanied by a video of what appeared to be a speedboat cutting through the water, with a number of people on board. An explosion then appears to blow it up.
A senior U.S. official said a Special Operations aircraft — either an attack helicopter or an MQ-9 Reaper drone — carried out the attack on Tuesday morning against a four-engine speedboat loaded with drugs. U.S. surveillance aircraft and other sensors had been monitoring cartel maritime traffic for weeks before the strike, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.
The strike is an astonishing departure from traditional drug interdiction efforts. A second senior U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said there would be more such attacks against cartel boats.
The action comes amid a major buildup of U.S. naval forces outside Venezuela’s waters. The administration has also stepped up belligerent rhetoric about fighting drug cartels and labeled Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, a terrorist cartel leader.
Mr. Trump signed a still-secret directive in July instructing the Pentagon to use military force against some Latin American drug cartels that his administration has labeled “terrorist” organizations. Around the same time, the administration declared that a Venezuelan criminal group was a terrorist organization and that Mr. Maduro was its leader, while calling his government illegitimate.
Since then, the Pentagon has moved U.S. Navy assets, including warships, into the southern Caribbean Sea. In response, Mr. Maduro said that he was deploying 4.5 million militiamen around his country and vowed to “defend our seas, our skies and our lands” from any incursions.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused the Maduro government of having effectively turned Venezuela into a “narco-state” in an indictment that was unsealed in March 2020 in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The indictment charged Mr. Maduro and some of his top aides — including Hugo Carvajal, then his chief of military intelligence — of being leaders of a sprawling drug trafficking organization known as the Cartel de los Soles, or the Cartel of the Suns.
Named for the sun insignia on the epaulets of Venezuelan generals, the cartel was first led by Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, according to prosecutors. Over the course of more than 20 years, prosecutors said, the cartel worked with guerrillas in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to ship tons of cocaine from clandestine airstrips, airports and seaports in Venezuela to U.S. soil. In doing so, the cartel not only made millions of dollars, but also weaponized cocaine “by flooding it into the United States to inflict its harmful and addictive effects on communities throughout this country,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Carvajal pleaded guilty to narco-terrorism conspiracy charges in June. But charges are still pending against Mr. Maduro and Diosdado Cabello Rondón, a leader of the Venezuelan legislature and a former vice president of the country.
Mr. Maduro has accused the Trump administration of building a false portrayal of him to try to force him from office. On Monday, he told reporters he “would constitutionally declare a republic in arms” if his country were attacked by U.S. forces deployed to the Caribbean, according to The Associated Press.
U.S. officials previously indicated that American guided-missile destroyers that had recently deployed to the region could target boats operated by drug cartels transporting fentanyl to the United States.
During remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump told reporters that “when you leave the room, you’ll see that we just, over the last few minutes, literally, shot a boat — a drug-carrying boat.” He added that there were “a lot of drugs” on the vessel.
“And there’s more where that came from,” the president continued. He said that the drugs targeted on Tuesday “came out of Venezuela” and added that “we have a lot of drugs pouring into our country.”
In his social media post, he added: “Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America.”
The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group — including the U.S.S. San Antonio, the U.S.S. Iwo Jima and the U.S.S. Fort Lauderdale, carrying 4,500 sailors — and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,200 Marines, recently arrived in the region, Defense Department officials said.
Several P-8 surveillance planes and at least one submarine have also deployed to the region, officials said.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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