President Trump’s unilateral, indiscriminate “drug boat” bombings have expanded from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on Wednesday. “The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route, and carrying narcotics. There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”
Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific. The vessel was known by our intelligence to be… pic.twitter.com/BayDhUZ4Ac
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) October 22, 2025
Hegseth then went on to compare these alleged drug traffickers—who were killed thousands of miles away from the U.S. border—to the 9/11 perpetrators.
“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” he said. “There will be no refuge or forgiveness—only justice.”
All previous bombings have occurred in the Caribbean Sea, where the Trump administration is ratcheting up its military presence. This strike has broadened the scope of the administration’s already deeply controversial bombing campaign. And this kind of language, combining the failed war on drugs with the failed war on terror, has been deployed to justify brutal extrajudicial executions that have killed 32 people at this point, at least two of whom were just regular fishermen.
“Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives, so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough,’” Trump said last week. “It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people … these are people that are killing our population.”
That number is a complete guess at best. And there is no evidence beyond the administration’s own word that these boats were carrying drugs, or that the men blown to bits were drug traffickers. There are no questions asked, and no other evidence aside from the grainy highlight reels officials like Hegseth post.
Chad “Charpo” Joseph and Rishi Samaroo were two northern Trinidadian fishermen murdered by the Trump administration earlier this month for being “narcoterrorists.”
“I just want to know why Donald Trump killing poor people just so,” Joseph’s uncle “Dollars” told The Guardian. “Just because he going after the people gas and their oil. He going after people riches and killing poor people children.”
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