By TheWanderingTraders
The United States has carried out another deadly maritime strike targeting suspected drug traffickers, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday.
According to Hegseth, the latest operation was conducted in the Caribbean Sea and targeted a vessel allegedly linked to the Tren de Aragua criminal organisation — a powerful transnational gang originating from Venezuela.
“Six male narco-terrorists were on board and were killed,” Hegseth confirmed, adding that the strike formed part of a broader campaign ordered by President Donald Trump to clamp down on drug trafficking networks operating in the Americas.
Hegseth also shared a video of the operation on X (formerly Twitter). The footage shows a small vessel in the crosshairs of what appears to be a surveillance drone before an explosion engulfs the boat in a massive cloud of smoke.
The Pentagon says this marks the tenth such strike carried out under the Trump administration since early September. While most of the operations have taken place in or near South American waters in the Caribbean, two additional strikes were conducted in the Pacific Ocean on October 21 and 22.
However, the expanding campaign has sparked growing unease within Washington. Lawmakers from both parties have questioned the legality of the strikes and whether the president possesses unilateral authority to order them without congressional oversight.
On September 10, twenty-five Democratic senators sent a letter to the White House, alleging that a similar strike earlier that month had been conducted “without evidence that the individuals on the vessel and the vessel’s cargo posed a threat to the United States.”
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, has also argued that the Constitution requires congressional approval for such military actions, even if the targets are non-state actors.
President Trump has dismissed these criticisms, asserting that he holds full legal authority to direct the operations. He also revealed that his administration has formally designated the Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organisation.
“We’re allowed to do that,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “And if we do it by land, we may go back to Congress.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio backed the president’s stance, saying, “If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, they should stop sending drugs to the United States.”
The six deaths reported in Friday’s strike bring the total number of people killed in the recent US anti-narcotics operations to at least 43, according to official counts.
Despite Washington’s insistence that the strikes are part of a counter-narcotics mission, analysts and regional officials believe the campaign also serves a geopolitical purpose — to apply military and political pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro, a longtime adversary of Trump, has frequently accused the former US president of orchestrating efforts to destabilise his government. He has also rejected accusations from Washington that he leads a state-sponsored drug trafficking network, calling them politically motivated and “completely false.”
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