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'Where Is Congress?' US Kills 4 More Bombing Another Boat in the Caribbean
The strikes have left over 200 people dead "so far without a scintilla of proof narco-trafficking has been affected, just wanton barbarity for shits and giggles," said one attorney.
Aug 26, 2026
The US military continued President Donald Trump's deadly boat bombing campaign against alleged drug traffickers on Monday with its second strike in as many days, bringing the death toll since Sunday to six, with at least 227 people killed overall.
After announcing a Sunday bombing in the Pacific Ocean that killed two, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said on social media Tuesday that under the direction of Cmdr. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, "Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean. Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed four narco-terrorists."
While Trump's boat strikes began last September, Donovan took over SOUTHCOM in February. He said Tuesday that "Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere continues executing precise, lethal operations against the cartels. We will hunt, disrupt, and defeat these narco-terrorist networks. SOUTHCOM is resolved to neutralizing cartel terror and violence throughout the region and into the US homeland."
Critics of the boat bombings and related military action on land in Latin America, including many Democrats in Congress, have condemned the Trump administration's attacks on vessels as "war crimes, murder, or both," but both GOP-controlled chambers have so far failed to pass war powers resolutions to rein in or end the strikes.
Responding to SOUTHCOM's social media post, Amnesty International USA issued its latest denunciation of "this horrific boat strike campaign," and asked, "Where is Congress?"
Looking ahead to the next presidential election or later, David Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute wondered, "What Democrat will promise to prosecute these murderers?"
In addition to being blatantly illegal under US and international law, as various experts around the world have argued, the strikes are seemingly ineffective at stopping the flow of drugs into the United States, according to recent reporting.
After Monday's strike, journalist Alex Horton pointed to his July report with three Washington Post colleagues that the strikes haven't reduced the amount of cocaine entering the country, "but they're prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a closed-door congressional briefing, and interviews with current and former US and foreign officials."
One senior Colombian security official told the newspaper that "there was a dissuasive effect in one type of transportation... So it has forced them to seek out other methods. Taking the drugs out through ports has increased, stockpiling it on large ships."
An Ecuadorian naval intelligence official said that "the business is so extraordinarily profitable that the cartels do not mind paying freight costs that are five or even 10 times higher... They know that while the United States may destroy one speedboat, they will successfully get 10 semisubmersibles—or other speedboats that evade detection—through."
Angelo Guisado, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, similarly highlighted the campaign's ineffectiveness on Wednesday. He called out SOUTHCOM for "delighting in the slaughter of innocents while the world burns," and leaving over 200 people dead "so far without a scintilla of proof narco-trafficking has been affected, just wanton barbarity for shits and giggles."
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'Lawless Killing Spree at Sea Resumes' as US Announces Fresh Boat Bombings
With the latest two casualties, the Trump administration's boat bombing spree has now claimed the lives of at least 223 people.
Aug 24, 2026
The US military has resumed its campaign of bombing alleged drug-trafficking vessels after a two-month pause in a campaign that many legal experts and human rights groups believe constitutes a murder spree.
In a Monday social media post, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said it carried out a "lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes" in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday. Two people were killed as a result of the attack, SOUTHCOM claimed.
In announcing the strike, SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis Donovan said the attack was part of a campaign of "imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists—disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership, and eliminating cartel terror across the region."
Donovan's boasts about the effectiveness of the boat strikes in combating the drug trade come less than a month after a leaked a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) analysis revealed that the boat-bombing campaign has not "reduced the amount of cocaine entering” the country, as drug cartels have found alternate methods for shipping their product into the US.
With the latest two casualties, the boat bombing campaign launched nearly a year ago by President Donald Trump's administration has now claimed the lives of at least 223 people.
Adam Isaacson, director of the Defense Oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), criticized the administration for resuming its boat bombings despite "overwhelming evidence that they are murder; that many, likely most, of the dead are either super-low-level or uninvolved with drugs; and that cocaine supply is unaffected."
Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, delivered a similarly scathing assessment, commenting that "the Trump administration's lawless killing spree at sea resumes."
Nicholas Grossman, professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, described the boat strike campaign as "murderous" and "illegal," adding that its victims are "not terrorists" and "may not even be drug traffickers."
Investigative journalist Camila Lourdes Galarza observed that "there’s still no proof any of the victims" of the boat strikes were involved in the drug trade.
Lourdes Galarza sarcastically added that if the victims had been drug traffickers, "the US would probably give them a deal" like the one given to Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was pardoned by Trump last year despite being previously convicted on narcotics trafficking charges.
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‘They Are Murder Victims,’ Sen. Tim Kaine Says of People Killed by Trump Boat Strikes
"I urge you to halt this illegal, costly, and ineffective operation."
Aug 04, 2026
Sen. Tim Kaine on Monday accused the Trump administration of committing murder with its campaign of military strikes against purported drug trafficking vessels, which has killed at least 221 people since its launch in September 2025.
In a letter sent to President Donald Trump, Kaine (D-Va.) said that he reviewed classified notifications sent to Congress related to the boat strike campaign and concluded that the US "is engaged in violent and fatal attacks against people far beyond those" whom the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said would be legitimate military targets.
Kaine didn't go into detail about the OLC's classified legal opinion justifying the strikes, but he said the evidence he has gathered suggests the US "has killed individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking."
"They are murder victims," Kaine emphasized.
Kaine also pointed to a recent analysis conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, first reported on by The Washington Post last month, which found that the boat strike campaign "has had no effect on the flow of illegal drugs into the United States."
Kaine concluded his letter by urging Trump to "closely examine the circumstances of these strikes, to ensure that you are personally aware of the extent to which the leadership of the Department of Defense has exceeded your July 2025 directive, incurring massive expense and operating with dubious legality, and with no progress towards your stated objective."
"And once you have done so," Kaine added, "I urge you to halt this illegal, costly, and ineffective operation."
Despite Kaine's warnings, there is little sign that the administration is rethinking its boat strike campaign.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) on Monday announced the formation of the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, a new command structure aimed specifically at combating international drug cartels.
Journalist Juan Esteban Silva described the announcement of the task force as "major shift" in US security strategy that is putting "Colombia and Venezuela... at the center of the conversation."
An analysis published by The Diplomatic Insight on Tuesday said the SOUTHCOM announcement "aligns with Trump administration’s anti-narcotics campaign under a permanent command structure with expanded geographic reach, part of what the administration has described as a 'maximum pressure' policy against transnational criminal networks in the hemisphere."
The analysis also noted that the new command structure replaces Joint Task Force Southern Spear, which has been responsible for carrying out boat strike operations in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
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'There Will Come a Day When He Faces Prosecution': Trump Condemned After US Murders Two More at Sea
"The summary execution of two more in an alleged drug boat brings the number of murders ordered by Trump to more than 210," noted one human rights defender.
Jun 22, 2026
Two people were killed, and six others survived, a strike on Sunday that the US military claimed—without providing evidence—targeted a boat full of "narco-terrorists," but that human rights defenders called another summary execution worthy of prosecution.
"On June 21, at the direction of the commander of US Southern Command, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations," USSOUTHCOM said in a statement. "Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations."
"Two male narco-terrorists were killed during this action, and there were six male survivors," the statement added. "Following the engagement, USSOUTHCOM immediately notified US Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors."
More lawless killing in the Trump administration’s boat bombing campaign.Real killing in a phony armed conflict with “narco-terrorists.”This strike reportedly left 6 survivors.US record for rescuing survivors alive is…not great.
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— Brian Finucane (@bcfinucane.bsky.social) June 21, 2026 at 11:28 PM
According to The Intercept's Nick Turse, who has tracked all of the reported US boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, there have now been 66 such strikes, which have killed 215 people and left 12 survivors, based on USSOUTHCOM data.
The fate of previous boat strike survivors is not completely clear. After one April bombing, the US Coast Guard told UPI that search-and-rescue operations were called off after no signs of survivors were found. Last October, President Donald Trump said two strike survivors were repatriated to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia, where they faced prosecution.
Survivors of some of the strikes have accused US forces of torturing them.
Relatives of people killed in previous US boat bombings, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, have said that numerous victims were fishers who were not involved in the illicit drug trade.
In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.
"The summary execution of two more in an alleged drug boat brings the number of murders ordered by Trump to more than 210," former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said on social media. "There will come a day when he faces prosecution for these crimes."
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'Another Trump-Authorized Murder': 1 Dead, 2 Survivors Reported After Latest US Boat Bombing
More than 200 people have been killed in US strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that the Trump administration claimed—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs.
Jun 17, 2026
The US military said Tuesday that one person was killed and two others survived the latest attack on a boat that the Trump administration claimed—again without providing concrete evidence—was involved in smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
"On June 16, at the direction of the commander of US Southern Command Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations," SOUTHCOM said in a statement.
"Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," the statement continued. "One male narco-terrorist was killed during this action, and there were two male survivors."
SOUTHCOM added that it "immediately notified [the] US Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors."
It is not known whether the survivors were saved.
The attack—in which no US forces were harmed—was one of more than 60 that have occurred in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since US President Donald Trump launched the campaign early last September. More than 200 people have been killed.
Relatives of people killed in some of the boat strikes, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, say that at least some of the victims were fishers who were not part of the illicit drug trade.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused the US of “murder." Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was abducted during a US invasion in January and imprisoned in the United States on dubious narco-terrorism charges.
In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.
Experts argue that the strikes are illegal. Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America previously said that even in cases of vessels that were involved in drug trafficking, the bombings were illegal and “the equivalent of straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Just Security editor-in-chief and New York University School of Law professor Ryan Goodman said last month that the “overwhelming consensus of experts, myself included, assess these to be murder because no armed conflict” is occurring, adding that they would be a “war crime if it were armed conflict"—and possibly even a "crime against humanity."
Responding to Tuesday's strike, former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth lamented what he called "another Trump-authorized murder" and act of "blatant criminality."
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