Trump and Hegseth's Boat Strike Murder Spree Hasn't Slowed Cocaine Trafficking: DEA Analysis

An internal government analysis has revealed that President Donald Trump's campaign of strikes against alleged drug boats off the coasts of Latin America hasn't achieved its purported goal of diminishing the amount of cocaine being trafficked into the US.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) analysis has concluded that the boat-bombing campaign, which many legal experts and human rights groups consider acts of murder, has not "reduced the amount of cocaine entering" the country.

"DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States," reported the Post, "and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where US forces are less likely to open fire."

The Post added that US Department of Defense (DOD) officials last month gave a closed-door briefing toe members of Congress where they acknowledged the strikes had not reduced the purity of cocaine entering the US from Latin America.

In an interview with the Post, a DEA official said that drug cartels had several options in addition to smuggling contraband by boats and simply switched tactics to avoid being hit by US strikes, which so far have killed at least 221 people.

"When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side," the official said. "They always find the weak spots and exploit them."

Journalist Alex Horton, one of the authors of the Post report, described the boat-bombing campaign as what happens "when you merge the failures of the war on terror and the failures of the war on drugs."

The Post's report on the effectiveness of boat strikes came days after the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) released a lengthy report that similarly found that the boat strikes' "impact on the trafficking of cocaine, the main drug flowing from South America, has been slight to non-existent."

Adam Isaacson, director of the Defense Oversight program at WOLA, explained the pointlessness of the boat-bombing spree in a Saturday social media post.

"All cocaine produced in a year could fit on just over 1% of a single container ship," Isaacson wrote. "Imagine that scattered worldwide across innumerable boats, planes, vehicles, and people. 'Bombing boats' to stop drugs isn't just cruel and illegal—it's futile."

Georgetown University Law School professor Marty Lederman noted in a Monday social media post that the boat-bombing spree would be unjustified even if it were successful at reducing the flow of cocaine into the US.

"Another reminder, since no one in Congress appears to care," wrote Lederman. "These strikes are a campaign of unlawful murders, and the administration hasn't offered any plausible argument to the contrary."