Hegseth said Friday’s strike targeted a boat linked to Ejército de Liberación Nacional, a Colombian guerrilla group that the U.S. has considered a terrorist organization since the 1990s. He alleged in a post on X that the boat “was traveling along a known narco-trafficking route, and was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics.”
The defense secretary said the strike took place in international waters and within the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility, which includes the Caribbean Sea.
“The United States military will treat these organizations like the terrorists they are—they will be hunted, and killed, just like Al Qaeda,” Hegseth wrote.
At least 32 people have been killed in U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats. The Trump administration has said the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, arguing that the narcotics they smuggle kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, constituting an “armed attack.”
“When they’re loaded up with drugs, they’re fair game, and every one of those ships were,” President Trump told reporters last week.
The strikes have drawn some pushback from lawmakers who have pressed for more evidence that the boats were carrying drugs, and argue the administration hasn’t made the case that the attacks are legally permitted.
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday that he believed the legal justification offered to members of Congress was “very convoluted.”
“They had a very hard time explaining to us … the legal rationale for doing this and the constitutionality of doing it,” Kelly said. “The brief we got had a tremendous number of holes in it, and they had to go round and around to give us the legal rationale for doing this.”
The Venezuelan and Colombian governments have also criticized the strikes. This weekend, Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of hitting a fishing vessel in one of its strikes. Mr. Trump later called Petro an “illegal drug leader” and threatened to cut off U.S. aid to the South American country.
