Trump administration announces 16th deadly strike on an alleged drug boat : NPR
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a joint press conference with South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back, following the 57th Security Consultative Meeting at the Ministry of Defense in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.
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Lee Jin-man/AP
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a deadly new strike against a boat accused of transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the same day an aircraft carrier began heading toward the region in a new expansion of military firepower.
Tuesday’s attack killed two people aboard the ship, Hegseth said, bringing the Trump administration’s campaign toll in South American waters to at least 66 people in at least 16 strikes.
President Donald Trump justified the strikes by saying the United States was in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and claiming the boats were operated by foreign terrorist organizations. The administration provided no evidence or further details.
“We will find and stop ALL ships intending to smuggle drugs to America to poison our citizens,” Hegseth said during a trip to Asia.
Lawmakers from both parties have pressed the Trump administration for more information about who was targeted and the legal justification for the strikes, given that Congress has not authorized military action. U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk last week called on the United States to stop the attacks and “prevent extrajudicial killings of people on board these boats.”
The latest strike comes as the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford left the Mediterranean Sea heading for the Caribbean after Hegseth ordered it to the region more than a week ago. It will join an already significant deployment of U.S. planes, ships and thousands of troops in Latin America.
A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ships’ movements, confirmed that the Ford and the destroyer USS Bainbridge passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and headed into the Atlantic on Tuesday.
The Ford was initially deployed with five destroyers, but it is unclear whether all will go to the Caribbean. Two of the other destroyers in Ford’s strike group, the USS Winston Churchill and the USS Mahan, are currently in the Mediterranean, with the Mahan in port in Rota, Spain.
The other two destroyers, the USS Forrest Sherman and the USS Mitchener, are in the Red Sea, the official said.
As strikes and military means increase in the region, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accused of narcoterrorism in the United States, declared that the American government is “manufacturing” a war against him.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Trump was asked whether the United States would go to war on Venezuela. He replied: “I doubt it. I don’t think so. But they treated us very badly, not just because of the drugs.”
Norah O’Donnell, in the interview conducted Friday, also asked Trump if Maduro’s days were numbered.
“I would say yes. I think so,” the president said. Trump would not say whether or not he would order ground strikes in Venezuela.
During the latest strike, a video Hegseth posted on social media shows a gray box obscuring a boat appearing in the water before it explodes. The images then show the ship engulfed in flames.
