President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that U.S. forces had destroyed a boat carrying narcotics from Venezuela, framing the incident as part of a broader campaign against drug trafficking and foreign threats.
“Over the last few minutes, [we] literally shot out a drug-carrying boat—there were a lot of drugs on that boat,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House. “That just happened moments ago.”
Trump credited the military operation to the leadership of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom he praised for both counter-narcotics efforts and earlier actions targeting Iran’s nuclear program. He went on to link the alleged maritime interdiction to Venezuela, a country he repeatedly described as a source of narcotics and other threats.
“We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country—coming in for a long time. These came out of Venezuela, and [they’re] coming out very heavily,” Trump said.
The president did not provide details about the time, location or scale of the reported incident, nor did he specify which U.S. military branch or unit was involved. The Pentagon has not immediately confirmed the claim.
In a brief statement issued via his X account, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the U.S. military had “conducted a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization.”
In recent weeks, the United States has deployed eight warships—including an amphibious ready group, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and reconnaissance aircraft—to the southern Caribbean in a campaign aimed at disrupting Latin American drug cartels.
The group includes the amphibious ships San Antonio, Iwo Jima and Fort Lauderdale, which officials said could be stationed off Venezuela’s northern coast. Together, the three ships are carrying about 4,500 personnel, including a Marine expeditionary unit of roughly 2,200 troops trained for rapid crisis response.
These vessels are set to operate alongside three Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers—the Sampson, Jason Dunham and Gravely—which had been previously deployed to the Caribbean. The destroyers are built to counter simultaneous threats from air, land, sea and undersea.
Their vertical launch systems can fire Tomahawk cruise missiles for long-range strikes, standard missiles for air defense and rocket-assisted torpedoes for anti-submarine warfare. By adding amphibious ships and Marines, the task force gains the capability to land forces ashore quickly, if ordered.
Cracking down on transnational cartels has become a defining theme of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy. Earlier this year, his administration formally designated Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang and several other networks as global terrorist organizations. That designation grants U.S. agencies expanded authority to freeze assets, disrupt financing and pursue cartel leadership using tools traditionally reserved for counterterrorism operations.
More recently, the administration labeled Venezuela’s so-called Cartel of the Suns—an alleged trafficking network run by President Nicolás Maduro and senior members of his military—as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” entity. U.S. prosecutors have indicted Maduro and several of his top aides, accusing them of turning Venezuela into a narco-state and conspiring to flood the United States with cocaine. The State Department has placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro’s capture—an unprecedented figure for a sitting head of state.
The Venezuelan strongman has rejected the U.S. accusations, calling them politically motivated and aimed at justifying regime change. In response to the naval buildup, Maduro announced that his government would activate a sweeping militia mobilization to “defend national sovereignty.”
McClatchy DC reporter Emily Goodin contributed to this story.
©2025 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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