Oct. 23 (UPI) — The United States attacked a boat in the eastern Pacific on Wednesday, killing three people, totaling two boats and five deaths in two days.
On Tuesday, the United States struck a boat in the Pacific off the west coast of Central America killing two, said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. They were the eighth and ninth strikes, bringing the death toll of attacks since Sept. 2 to 37.
At the White House on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the strikes will begin hitting land targets.
“They had one today in the Pacific, and the way I look at it — every time I look — because it is violent and it is very — it’s amazing, the weaponry, you know they have these boats that go 45 to 50 miles an hour in the water, and when you look at the accuracy and the power — look, we have the greatest military in the world,” he said.
Trump said boat attacks have forced the smuggling operations onto land routes, The New York Times reported. He said the administration would “probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we are doing” before attacking land targets, but insisted he doesn’t need their permission to act, The Times said.
“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land. They haven’t experienced that yet, but now we are totally prepared to do that.”
Hegseth posted twice on X, showing two different videos, that the boats were operated by a “Designated Terrorist Organization(s) and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific. … Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere. Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people. There will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”
The administration has designated the groups the attack victims belonged to as “terrorist organizations,” though they don’t meet the criteria. Drug cartels are motivated by money, while terrorist organizations are motivated by ideological goals, The Times reported. Either way, the law allows the administration to freeze their assets, not kill them.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, “We want to keep fentanyl out of the United States, … but those routes through the Caribbean on boats are predominantly used to bring cocaine to Europe,” not to the United States.
Kelly also said that when administration officials briefed Congress on the strikes, they “had a very hard time explaining to us the rationale, the legal rationale for doing this and the constitutionality of doing it.”
The administration told Congress that there was “a secret list of over 20 narco organizations, drug trafficking cartels,” but they didn’t share the list, CBS reported that Kelly said.
