MEXICO CITY — The United States has widened its military campaign against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America, announcing on Wednesday that its forces had struck a boat purportedly smuggling narcotics off the Pacific coast of Colombia.
It was the eighth alleged drug vessel bombed by the U.S. in recent weeks, and the first attacked in the Pacific Ocean.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the airstrike killed two people, bringing the death toll in the attacks to 34. He said the vessel was “known by our intelligence” to be carrying narcotics, but did not provide evidence of those claims.
In a short video clip posted on X by Hegseth, a small boat carrying some kind of cargo is seen speeding through waves before a massive explosion hits, leaving the vessel drifting on the water in flames.
The attack drew swift rebuke from U.S. lawmakers who have criticized the Trump administration’s campaign of secretive strikes.
“Another illegal military strike on a boat, this time in the Pacific, broadening the Administration’s deadly campaign to another ocean,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California. “Once again, there is no detail on who was killed or why.”
The latest attack comes amid escalating tensions between President Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and some observers speculated that it was designed in part to punish Petro for defying Trump.
Petro, who has criticized Trump on issues ranging from migration to the war in Gaza, has in recent days accused the U.S. of killing innocent civilians and of using the strikes as pretext to try to push out Venezuela’s leftist authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. He has slammed Trump for not doing more to reduce demand for narcotics in the U.S., which is the world’s top consumer of drugs.
After Petro accused the U.S. of murder, saying that an earlier strike had killed a Colombian fisherman in the Caribbean, Trump retorted without evidence that Petro was a “drug dealer” and warned that the U.S. would take unilateral action to combat drug trafficking there. He also vowed to cut aid to Colombia, which has long been one of America’s closest allies in the region, and to impose punishing tariffs on Colombian imports.
Since Trump took office in January, he has gone to lengths to paint Latin American drug traffickers as a threat to national security, officially declaring several cartels as terrorist groups and then ordering the Pentagon to use military force against them. Trump, who insists the U.S. is locked in an “armed conflict” with the cartels and has the right to defend itself against them, has deployed thousands of U.S. troops and a small armada of ships and warplanes to the Caribbean.
In his social media post, Hegseth compared the alleged drug traffickers to Al Qaeda, the terror group that masterminded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said. “There will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”
U.S. lawmakers, including members of Trump’s Republican Party, have questioned the legality — as well as the effectiveness — of the strikes.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said this week that he believes the strikes are illegal because only Congress has the authority to declare war. Boats traveling some 2,000 miles south of the U.S. border don’t pose an imminent threat to Americans, he told journalist Piers Morgan.
“These are outboard boats that would have to refuel 20 times to reach Miami,” he said.
Paul questioned why U.S. officials weren’t first attempting to detain the boats and arrest the suspected smugglers before carrying out lethal strikes. “We don’t just summarily execute people,” he said. “We present evidence and convict them.”
Paul is part of a bipartisan group of senators that is planning to force a vote on legislation that would block the U.S. from engaging in hostilities within or against Venezuela without explicit approval from Congress. The measure’s passage is a long shot in the Republican-dominated Senate, but a vote would require senators to take a public stance on Trump’s escalating military campaign.
Schiff, who co-introduced the resolution, said the Senate must assert its authority and “stop the United States from being dragged — intentionally or accidentally — into full-fledged war in South America.”
Michael Shifter, past president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research group, said the broadening of the military’s theater to the Pacific may be an effort to address criticism that only a small amount of drugs that reach the U.S. are trafficked through the Caribbean.
The Pacific is a major corridor for U.S.-bound illicit drugs, especially Colombia-produced cocaine. Chemical precursors for fentanyl and other synthetic drugs also cross the Pacific from Asia to Mexico.
“It may be aimed at trying to strengthen their case, because they’re being questioned a lot on that,” Shifter said, referring to the Trump administration. “The Pacific is where most of the drugs come from.”
He said the expanded strikes may increase fears in Mexico — the major conduit for drugs entering the United States. U.S. officials have warned that drone strikes on drug producers or traffickers in Mexico may be coming, even as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says her country would treat any unilateral military actions on her territory as “an invasion.”
“I’m sure they’re asking themselves in Mexico: ‘Are we next?’” Shifter said.
The White House has been more focused on Latin America than previous administrations, in part because its foreign policy is driven by Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of State and national security advisor. Rubio, the son of immigrants from Cuba, has a deep interest in the region and has long sought to counter leftists there, especially the authoritarian leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Many analysts believe the strikes, the military buildup and Trump’s authorization for the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela are signs that the White House hopes to topple Maduro, who leads one of the world’s most oil-rich nations.
But that contrasts with Trump’s repeated vow not to interfere in the politics of other nations. “The interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand,” he told an audience in the Middle East earlier this year.
Linthicum and McDonnell reported from Mexico City and Ceballos from Washington.