MIAMI (AP) — In Justification Boat attack by US forces Suspected drug smuggling, President Donald Trump argued that the United States’ long-standing strategy of interdicting such ships at sea was a major failure.
“We’ve been doing that for 30 years and it’s just not working,” he said last month.
President Trump’s comments came around the same time the U.S. Coast Guard announced it had set a record for cocaine seizures, with an increase of 225 tons compared to the previous year. But this milestone did not deter the Republican president from reversing decades of U.S. anti-drug policy.
The US military was bombed under the Trump administration. 20 suspected drug smuggling vesselsthe result 80 deadin the Pacific and Caribbean. Mr. Trump and other government officials claim these boats are being flown to the United States with deadly drugs by narco-terrorists and cartel members.
The strike sparked an international backlash. foreign leadershuman rights organizations, Democrats and some Republicans Those who expressed concerns that the United States was involved extrajudicial murder It undermines its standing in the world.
Meanwhile, drug war veterans argue that American resources would be better spent doubling down on traditional approaches to interdicting drug ships, especially in the long run. That’s because drug ship crews often have valuable information that can help authorities better target cartels and trafficking networks. They say that dead people say nothing.
The Coast Guard has been fighting the drug war for years.
For decades, the Coast Guard has seized small vessels suspected of smuggling illegal drugs. Much of that effort focuses on halting shipments of cocaine produced in Colombia’s jungles.
Working with partner countries and other federal agencies (Drug Enforcement Administration, State Department, Department of Justice, and U.S. Southern Command’s Interagency Task Force South in Key West, Florida), the goal is to inflict significant harm on traffickers and limit the amount of drugs entering the United States.
Despite the Coast Guard’s constant complaints that it lacked the funds to seize more drugs, the operation has never been more successful, at least in some ways.
The Coast Guard’s recent record of cocaine seizures was nearly 40% higher than the annual average over the past 10 years. The shipment contained 38 tons of cocaine, which the cutter Hamilton had unloaded on his return from a two-month patrol. This is the largest amount ever seized by a single Coast Guard vessel during a deployment, according to a Coast Guard report. The ban has continued during the federal government shutdown as part of an operation known as “Operation Pacific Viper,” with several cutters reporting large-scale seizures last month.
In almost all cases, drug smugglers brought to the US And valuable intelligence was gathered about ever-changing smuggling routes and production methods, all without loss of life and at a much lower cost to American taxpayers. Experts said each missile strike would likely cost far more than the cocaine cargo on board every ship.
“The Coast Guard has extraordinary power and authority to conduct effective drug interdiction without killing unidentified individuals on board small boats,” said Douglas Farrar, a Latin American national security expert and president of IBI Consultants. “With resources, it would be far more effective, sustainable, and likely legal than current DoD-led operations.”
Trump administration officials say a change in strategy is needed.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the change in strategy this week, saying “deterrence alone won’t work.”
“Interdiction has limited or no deterrent effect,” he added. “These drug organizations have already factored in the fact that they could lose 5% of their drug shipments. That’s not going to stop them from coming.”
Part of the problem, authorities and experts say, is that demand for cocaine is high and supply has never been stronger. As a sign of that trend, cocaine prices have been at historic lows for more than a decade.
The Coast Guard also doesn’t have enough ships or crews to stop them all. At most, the government has seized less than 10% of the cocaine, which authorities believe flows into the United States in small vessels through what is known as the “transit zone” – an open sea larger than Russia.
Cocaine destined for the United States primarily travels north along the west coast of South America to Central America, then enters the United States by land via Mexico. Cargo destined for Europe is often smuggled through the Caribbean hidden on container ships.
These bans target cocaine, not fentanyl.
President Trump claimed in a social media post that his airstrikes had blown up ships carrying fentanyl, saving 25,000 American lives for each ship destroyed. Experts and former U.S. anti-drug officials say Trump’s statements are either exaggerations or lies.
Over the past decade, U.S. authorities have been alarmed by the rise in overdose deaths in the United States, especially from opioids and synthetic opioids. Opioid overdose death The number peaked at 112,000 in 2023, but fell to 74,000 in April. Experts say the decline is largely due to the Biden administration’s efforts to increase the availability of life-saving drugs to prevent overdose deaths.
Cocaine is a drug that enters the United States from South America. Fentanyl, on the other hand, is typically smuggled into the United States by land from Mexico, where it is manufactured using chemicals imported from China and India. Deaths from cocaine overdose are less common than deaths from fentanyl. Nearly 20,000 people died from cocaine overdoses in the United States last year, according to federal data.
President Trump and administration officials have said the crew members of the targeted ships were narco-terrorists or cartel members.
The Associated Press visited the area where some Venezuelan fishing boats departed and identified the four men killed in the attack. In dozens of interviews, residents and relatives of the area said: Most of the men who died were laborers or fishermen who earned $500 a trip..
Law enforcement officials and experts echoed these findings, saying smugglers captured by the Coast Guard are often hired for pennies to transport drugs from point A to point B.
“They’re never the central figure,” said Kendra McSweeney, a geographer at Ohio State University who has spent years studying U.S. drug policy.
Trump administration officials recently pushed for large-scale foreclosures
In April, months before President Trump launched military action, Attorney General Pam Bondi traveled to South Florida to bring the Coast Guard Cutter James home from its latest anti-drug patrol. 20 tons of cocaine worth more than $500 million was seized.
Flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel, she praised the “prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven approach to thwarting these criminal enterprises.”
“This is not a drop in the bucket,” Bondi said, standing in front of a boat loaded several feet high with bales of colorful drugs wrapped in plastic. “There’s $500 million worth of pure, uncut cocaine behind you.”
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Mustian reported from Natchitoches, Louisiana. Associated Press writer Konstantin Tropin in Washington contributed to this report.
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