Hegseth: Bombing of narcotics boat just the start

A U.S. strike that destroyed a reported high-speed drug cartel boat in the Caribbean on Tuesday was part of what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called a Trump administration strategy against international narcotics traffickers.

Mr. Hegseth said Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” that the mission sent a signal to criminal gangs like the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua that the U.S. is prepared to take them on.

“President Trump is willing to go on the offense in ways that others have not been,” Mr. Hegseth said. “You’re poisoning our people, we’ve got incredible assets and they are gathering in the region.”

The secretary said he couldn’t discuss details of the operation that blasted the boat and killed the 11 traffickers on board.

“We knew exactly who was in the boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented, and that was Tren de Aragua,” Mr. Hegseth said. “Those 11 drug traffickers are no longer with us, sending a very clear signal that this is an activity that the United States is not going to tolerate in our hemisphere.”

Reaction in Latin America to the U.S. action was mixed. 

Colombian President Gustavo Petro questioned the U.S. operation, saying that it’s possible to conduct maritime interdiction of drug shipments without attacking a vessel’s occupants. He said that Colombia typically captures them, since those transporting the drugs “are not the big drug traffickers,” but rather, “very poor young people” from the region.

“Bombing the boat violates the universal principle of proportionality of force and results in murder,” the leftist president wrote on X.

But Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar praised the strike, adding that drug traffickers should be killed “violently.”

“I, along with most of the country, am happy that the U.S. naval deployment is having success in their mission,” Ms. Persad-Bissessar said in a statement late Tuesday. “The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers; the U.S. military should kill them all violently.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the drugs aboard the vessel were likely headed to Trinidad or elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Ms. Persad-Bissessar said that restricting illegal guns, drugs and human trafficking would decrease violence in the Caribbean region and the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, which has imposed two state of emergencies in recent months.

“Our country has been ravaged by bloody violence and addiction because of the greed of the cartels,” Ms. Persad-Bissessar said. “The slaughter of our people is fueled by evil cartel traffickers.”

The U.S. is offering a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Mr. Hegseth called him “a kingpin of a drug narco state.”

“We know he’s involved in the types of drug running that has affected the American people directly,” he told the Fox hosts.

The attack on the speedboat shows that the Trump administration will take on dangerous adversaries using a clear demonstration of military might, Mr. Hegseth said.

“The precise application of American power can have incredible impacts and reshape dynamics around the world and in the region,” he said. “So Nicolas Maduro, as he considers whether or not he wants to continue to be a narco trafficker, has some decisions to make. That’s all I’ll say about that.”

This article includes wire service reports.