In a dramatic and controversial escalation of U.S. anti-drug policy, President Donald Trump has ordered a series of lethal military strikes against suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean, igniting a fierce debate over legality, ethics, and the risk of wider conflict. The latest strike, announced on September 19, 2025, marks the third such operation this month, with U.S. forces destroying a boat in international waters and killing three individuals alleged to be "narcoterrorists" from Venezuela.
According to Kurdistan24, President Trump took to his Truth Social platform to claim credit for this most recent strike, stating, "On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility." The president accompanied his post with a surveillance video showing a speedboat being struck by a projectile and engulfed in flames, underscoring the administration’s intent to send a clear and forceful message.
This latest operation follows two earlier strikes in September. The first, on September 2, obliterated a vessel operated by suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua organization, resulting in 11 deaths. The second, on September 16, killed three Venezuelans aboard another suspected drug boat. As reported by 9News and Kurdistan24, all three strikes took place in international waters, far from U.S. shores, and were justified by the administration as necessary to stem the flow of deadly narcotics—primarily cocaine and fentanyl—into the United States.
President Trump has been unequivocal in his rationale for these operations. "The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US," he declared in a Truth Social post. When pressed by reporters about the evidence supporting the claim that the targeted vessels were carrying drugs, Trump replied, "We have proof. All you have to do is look at the cargo that was spattered all over the ocean — big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place." The White House has released video and photographic evidence purporting to show the aftermath of the strikes, with bags of narcotics strewn across the water.
The Pentagon, for its part, has deployed over 4,000 troops and significant naval assets to the southern Caribbean, including guided-missile destroyers, as part of a broader campaign to target Latin American drug cartels. According to The New York Times, this shift in strategy began earlier in 2025 when the Trump administration designated several cartels—including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel—as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). This reclassification, a significant departure from past practice, provided what the administration views as a legal framework for treating drug smugglers as military adversaries rather than mere criminals.
Yet the move has sparked immediate and intense backlash from legal experts, human rights advocates, and Democratic lawmakers. Under established maritime law, as explained by Professor Donald Rothwell of the Australian National University in an interview with 9News, "no country can exercise jurisdiction on the high seas," with the sole exception being piracy. Rothwell emphasized, "There is nothing to suggest the people in these boats were pirates," raising serious doubts about the legality of the U.S. actions. Amnesty International USA has gone further, describing the operations as possible "extrajudicial executions" and asserting there was "absolutely no legal justification" for the strikes.
Traditionally, the U.S. Coast Guard, sometimes in cooperation with the Navy, has handled drug interdiction in the Caribbean as a law enforcement matter—stopping, boarding, and arresting crews for prosecution in U.S. courts. The new approach, which replaces arrests with lethal force, has alarmed many observers. As reported by Kurdistan24, Senator Adam Schiff of California, a leading Democratic critic, warned, "Blowing up boats in the Caribbean without any legal authority risks dragging the United States into another war, and provoking attacks against American citizens." Schiff is currently pushing a war-powers measure aimed at halting the operations.
Despite the outcry, the Trump administration remains defiant. A senior official told Fox News that the strikes are part of an effort to end a "brutal war, which was brought on by Joe Biden’s incompetence," framing the campaign as both a matter of national self-defense and a response to failures in previous drug policy. Administration rhetoric has consistently painted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro not as a legitimate head of state but as the leader of a criminal enterprise. In July, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the "Cartel de los Soles," a group described as being headed by Maduro and other top Venezuelan officials, allegedly providing material support to FTOs like Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel. "Today’s action further exposes the illegitimate Maduro regime’s facilitation of narco-terrorism," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the time.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has echoed these sentiments, referring to "narco-terror cartels" operating under Maduro and vowing, “We’re not going to have a cartel, masquerading as a government, operating in our own hemisphere.” Maduro, indicted in New York on narco-terrorism charges in 2020, has denounced the U.S. operations as pretexts for "regime change." According to The New York Times, the administration has also circulated a draft bill that would grant the president sweeping legal authority to use military force against individuals, groups, and even nations linked to narcotrafficking—a measure whose fate in Congress remains uncertain.
The international response has not been limited to legal scholars and U.S. politicians. China, for one, has criticized the U.S. naval buildup as a violation of the United Nations Charter, warning of the risks of escalating military tensions in the region. Meanwhile, the Pentagon maintains that its actions are aimed at deterring other cartels and criminal networks from attempting to smuggle drugs into the United States, with Professor Rothwell observing, "If you look at some of the statements coming out the Trump administration, it certainly indicates they're using the supposed success of these strikes ... to send a clear warning message to others to reconsider their actions."
With three deadly strikes in less than a month, the U.S. has entered uncharted waters—both literally and figuratively—in its war on drugs. The campaign has fulfilled Trump’s pledge to bring the "full power of America" against drug traffickers, but at the cost of raising profound questions about the laws of war, executive authority, and the potential for a wider conflict in the hemisphere. As the world watches, the debate over the legality and wisdom of these actions shows no sign of abating.
