The US military has attacked and destroyed two ships on the Pacific side of South America for the first time, as part of its continuing and controversial fight against what it says are drug trafficking activities.
The attacks – on Tuesday night and then early Wednesday – killed five people, according to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Previous attacks hit seven vessels in the Caribbean and killed at least 32 people.
The latest attacks marked a change from previous attacks, which occurred off the coast of Venezuela, where the United States has deployed an extraordinary military presence.
Hegseth posted a short video of the attack Tuesday night, showing a small boat, half full of brown packages, seen moving in the sea. Several seconds into the video, the ship explodes and is seen floating motionless in flames.
In a social media post, Hegseth took the unusual step of equating the alleged drug traffickers with the terrorist group that carried out the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and on our people,” Hegseth said, adding that “there will be no refuge or forgiveness, only justice.”
By attacking ships in the Pacific, the administration expanded the scope of its campaign, although the reasons for the expansion were not immediately clear. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and Hegseth did not provide additional details beyond the video about X.
Donald Trump announced what appears to have been the first attack on a ship on September 3 and posted a short video of the attack.
Since then, the Trump administration has detailed more attacks without revealing many details about the targets, other than the number of people killed and the allegation that the ships were carrying narcotics. The attacks have drawn widespread condemnation, both from civil liberties groups and South American countries.
On Tuesday, The Guardian revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is providing most of the intelligence used to carry out the airstrikes. Experts say the agency’s central role means much of the evidence used to select targets will almost certainly remain secret.
The president confirmed last Wednesday that he had authorized covert CIA actions in Venezuela, but not what the agency would be doing.
White House officials have tried to justify the growing number of attacks with a dubious legal theory claiming that the ships are affiliated with “designated terrorist organizations” with which the United States was now in a “non-international armed conflict,” The Guardian reported.
Until this month, the government has referred to Tren de Aragua and other cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, or FTOs. Legal experts suggested that simply characterizing drug cartels as FTOs did not give the administration any additional authority to use deadly force.
White House officials have also tried to justify the attacks internally and externally by claiming that Trump was exercising his Article Two powers, which allow the president to use military force in self-defense in limited engagements.
The self-defense argument revolves around Trump’s designation of the Aragua Train as an FTO, a claim brought by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, to defend the deportations of dozens of Venezuelans earlier this year under the Alien Enemies Act.
The administration claimed that Tren de Aragua had infiltrated the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, so the presence of cartel members in the United States amounted to a “predatory incursion” by a foreign nation, allowing the deportation of any Venezuelan citizen.
But the administration has yet to provide concrete evidence that the Aragua Train has become an instrument of the Venezuelan government, and legal experts contacted for this article said the White House could only justify the attacks if it could prove it.
The attacks on suspected Venezuelan drug ships have largely been overseen by Miller and Tony Salisbury, his top lieutenant on the White House National Security Council (HSC), The Guardian previously reported.
Miller authorized the HSC earlier this year to become its own entity in Trump’s second term, a notable departure from previous administrations where it was considered part of the national security council and ultimately reported to the national security adviser.
That was the case, for example, of the second Venezuelan ship hit by Hellfire missiles on September 15. Although the White House was informed that the Pentagon had identified the ship as a viable target more than four days earlier, many senior White House officials only learned of the impending attack hours before it occurred.
Reuters contributed to this report.