President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters during a roundtable on criminal cartels in the State Dining Room of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, in Washington as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listens.
Evan Vucci/AP
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Evan Vucci/AP
West Palm Beach, Florida. — The U.S. military has struck another deadly blow against suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Saturday.
Hegseth, in a social media post, said the ship was operated by a U.S.-recognized terrorist organization, but did not specify which group was targeted. According to him, three people died as a result of the strike.
This is at least the 15th such strike carried out by the US military in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific since early September.
“This vessel, like ALL OTHERS, was known to our intelligence to be involved in illegal drug smuggling, transiting a known drug trafficking route and transporting drugs,” Hegseth said in a message on X.
The strikes have already killed at least 64 people by US forces.
Trump justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stop the flow of drugs into the United States. He said the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, relying on the same legal powers that the Bush administration used when it declared war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The White House has repeatedly rebuffed US lawmakers' demands for the administration to provide more information about the legal basis for the strikes, as well as more details about which cartels were targeted and which people were killed.
Hegseth, in a message Saturday announcing the latest strike, said “narco-terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home” and the Defense Department “will treat them EXACTLY the way we treated al-Qaeda.”
Senate Democrats renewed their request for more information about the strikes in a letter Friday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Hegseth.
“We also ask that you provide all legal opinions related to these strikes and a list of groups or other entities that the President has identified as being targeted,” the senators wrote.
Signatories of the letter included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, as well as Senators Jack Reed, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, Chris Coons, Patty Murray and Brian Schatz.
The letter says that so far the administration has “selectively shared information, sometimes contradictory,” with some members “while excluding others.”
Earlier Friday, the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee released a pair of letters sent to Hegseth in late September and early October asking the department to provide a legal justification for the strikes and a list of drug cartels that the Trump administration has designated as terrorist organizations to justify the use of military force.
