The U.S. military last week carried out another strike on a boat that officials said was transporting drugs to the country.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday that the U.S. military has every authorization to carry out strikes against boats carrying narcotics off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea, after another strike on a drug cartel vessel late last week.
“We have every authorization needed. These are designated as foreign terrorist organizations,” Hegseth said in an interview on Fox News.
“If you’re in our hemisphere, if you’re in the Caribbean, if you’re north of Venezuela and you want to traffic drugs to the United States, you are a legitimate target of the United States military,” he added in the interview with the cable news channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”
On Oct. 3, the U.S. military carried out an airstrike against a boat it said was carrying drugs to the United States, killing four on board, Hegseth announced on social media. It marked at least the fourth known U.S. strike in the Caribbean Sea since the start of September targeting drug boats.
The Pentagon chief said that U.S. intelligence had confirmed “without a doubt” that the vessel “was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route.”
Hegseth did not say which terrorist organization was involved in the drug-trafficking boat that was struck, and other details about the strike were not disclosed.
Trump recently declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and stated that the United States is currently engaged in an “armed conflict” with those cartels, according to a memo to Congress.
“Although friendly foreign nations have made significant efforts to combat these organizations, suffering significant losses of life, these groups are now transnational and conduct ongoing attacks throughout the Western Hemisphere as organized cartels,” said a report that was obtained by The Epoch Times on Oct. 2.
The administration also has “determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States,” according to the memo, which was undated.
