The U.S. military killed 14 people in strikes against four boats it claimed were transporting drugs in the Eastern Pacific on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday.
The strikes marked the deadliest day of President Donald Trump’s campaign against boats that his administration claims are manned by drug trafficking cartels, and marked a further escalation in an operation that has begun to draw scrutiny from his own party.
Hegseth said the four boats “were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics.” He added that one person survived the strikes and Mexico had assumed responsibility for their rescue.
Read more: Republicans Are Starting To Speak Out Against Trump’s Boat Bombing Campaign
Hegseth shared footage of the strikes on social media that showed several boats catching fire.
The strikes bring the number of people killed since the start of the campaign to 57. As in previous operations, the administration has not provided evidence to show that the targets were cartel members. The family members of at least one victim of the strikes claimed he was a fisherman and denied any links to cartels.
Legal experts have questioned the legality of Trump’s bombing of suspected civilian cartel members without any attempt to intercept or capture the offenders, and without approval from Congress.
The latest operation comes as a growing number of Trump’s own party are publicly challenging the bombing campaign, which has now expanded into a broader pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the Trump Administration considers illegitimate.
Trump has denied that he is seeking regime change in Venezuela, but in recent weeks, he has increased threats against the country’s president and ordered a massive naval buildup off Venezuela’s coast.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the Armed Services Committee, called for greater scrutiny of the strikes in an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday.
“We have oversight responsibilities, and we expect to get our questions answered,” he said.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, also urged talks on authorizing the use of force. “I think we’ve got to be very careful when you’re talking about ordering a kinetic strike,” he told the Times.
Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, also told the Times there are legitimate questions about the legality of Trump’s strikes without congressional authority. Collins said she would like to see the Senate “pass a resolution that either authorizes his force or prevents its use,” although the comments come after Senate Republicans struck down a measure that would have blocked Trump from continuing his assault on unmarked boats.
Read more: Trump’s Caribbean Bombing Campaign Brings War on Terror to the Americas
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford told C-SPAN that the White House “needs to give insight” to Congress about the military strikes
“If this was happening with this level of insight under the Biden administration, I’d be apoplectic,” Lankford said Thursday.
Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican from Kentucky, has emerged as a consistent critic of the campaign. Paul has gone so far this weekend as to join international experts in calling the strikes, which the Trump Administration says have killed 43 people, “extrajudicial killings.”
“No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” he said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
“The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it,” he added, emphasizing that the “drug war” is something that has traditionally been done through domestic law enforcement.
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