In a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s maritime war on narco-terrorism, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the first lethal military strike outside the Caribbean Sea — targeting and destroying a drug-smuggling vessel off Colombia’s Pacific coast.
Hegseth announced the eighth military strike against a narco-terrorist drug smuggling vessel on Wednesday. The military strike that destroyed the boat and killed two on board is the first to be conducted outside the Caribbean Sea area of operations.
In a social media post on X, Hegseth indicated the strike occurred on Tuesday in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Colombia. Hegseth said the strike that marks a broadening of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against narco-terrorist cartels at sea, saying, “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.”
According to Hegseth, the eighth kinetic military strike targeted a vessel that was known to military intelligence as being involved in illicit narcotics smuggling and was transiting a known narco-trafficking maritime transit route. Hegseth added, “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.”
Hegseth’s announcement contained an ominous warning to narco-terrorists that the kinetic military strikes will continue.
“Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere,” the secretary stated. “Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people. There will be no refuge or forgiveness—only justice.”
According to a report in the U.S. Naval Institute News (USIN), at least 34 people have been killed in the kinetic military strikes against narco-terrorists thus far. Eleven narco-terrorist smugglers were killed during the first strike conducted in the Caribbean Sea on September 2, Breitbart Texas’s Bob Price reported. In that military action, Trump administration officials reported the vessel carrying the 11 narco-terrorist smugglers was of Venezuelan origin and was being operated by members of the notorious Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.
Breitbart reported that President Trump designated the gang and several drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in an executive order on his first day in office. The executive order is entitled, “Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”
The unprecedented military kinetic strikes at sea are drawing criticism from some Democrats questioning the president’s authority to carry out the strikes on narco-terrorist smugglers. Last week, Congressman Adam Smith (D-Wash), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called for a congressional hearing on the use of military assets to conduct the kinetic strikes.
In mid-October, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) criticized the military campaign against the narco-terrorists. They filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the Office of Legal Counsel’s guidance and other related documentation regarding the targeting of narco-terrorist smugglers.
In an ACLU announcement regarding the filing of the request. the organization did not make mention of the more than 80,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2024. Staff attorney Jeffrey Stein with the ACLU’s National Security Project issued a statement on the military narc0-terrorist strikes, saying, “All available evidence suggests that President Trump’s lethal strikes in the Caribbean constitute murder, pure and simple.” He added, “The public deserves to know how our government is justifying these attacks as lawful, and given the stakes, immediate public scrutiny of its apparently radical theories is imperative.”
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Before his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @RandyClarkBBTX.
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