Colombian fishermen pull a recent catch of sea bass from their nets within the Caribbean.
John Otis for NPR
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John Otis for NPR
PUNTA CANOA, Colombia — Euris Cervantes begins the outboard motor of his fishing boat and pushes off from shore. It is 5 a.m., nonetheless darkish, and the Large Dipper shines overhead. As Cervantes maneuvers by way of a mangrove swamp in the direction of the open sea, a whole lot of herons take to the air.
It is a placid scene however Cervantes is nervous. He used to navigate some 40 miles offshore the place the fishing is a lot better. However he fears the U.S. army might mistake him for a cocaine trafficker and bomb his boat. For his personal security, Cervantes now stays near shore.
“You always think about the attacks,” Cervantes says.
Over the previous 5 months, the U.S. army has carried out at the least three dozen deadly assaults on alleged drug smuggling boats within the Caribbean Sea and the jap Pacific. The White Home and Pentagon has persistently characterised the operations as measures of nationwide self-defense towards “narco-terrorism.” The most recent strike on Friday killed two folks and introduced the dying toll from such operations to 126, in accordance with U.S. officers.
Euris Cervantes, a Colombian fisherman, shows one among his day’s catch — a lobster — caught within the Caribbean waters close to Punta Canoa.
John Otis for NPR
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John Otis for NPR
Moreover disrupting the lives of Colombian fishermen, the deadly strikes have outraged American allies. Nonetheless, drug-seizure knowledge counsel that the assaults are doing little to cease the stream of unlawful narcotics into the US.
President Trump claimed final week that the bombings have stopped 97% of all unlawful medication coming into the U.S. by water.
Nonetheless, Adam Isacson, a protection and safety professional on the Washington Workplace on Latin America, factors out that almost all narco-boats drop off their cargo in Central America or Mexico with the medication then taken overland to the U.S.
Over the last three months of 2025 – when the U.S. bombing marketing campaign was in full power – cocaine seizures on the U.S.-Mexican border amounted to 10,593 kilos, in accordance with U.S. Customs and Border Safety knowledge. That is a 34% enhance over the quantity of cocaine seized throughout the identical interval in 2024 when there have been no deadly strikes.
“We didn’t see less cocaine,” Isacson stated. “In fact, we saw more.”
As well as, European authorities have confiscated large quantities of cocaine in current months, together with a report nine-ton seizure by Portuguese police from a semi-submersible vessel crewed by three Colombians and a Venezuelan.
InsightCrime, which research organized crime in Latin America, decided that the huge seizures in Europe present “that after more than three months of lethal U.S. attacks on alleged drug boats, global drug flows have not halted — at most, they’re simply shifting routes.”
The boat strikes, which Human Rights Watch and lots of authorized specialists describe as illegal executions, could also be backfiring in different methods.
Phil Gunson who relies in Venezuela for the Worldwide Disaster Group, says the UK, the Netherlands and France used to share with the U.S. its intelligence on drug smuggling within the Caribbean however that is not the case.
“The allies don’t want their intelligence to be used for what they regard as illegal operations. In other words: killing people on the high seas,” he stated.
One other U.S. ally — Colombia — produces a lot of the world’s cocaine. However as a substitute of destroying drug boats, its army captures them.
The navy base within the coastal metropolis of Cartagena is filled with impounded narco-submarines and go-fast boats, a few of which may carry as much as 5 tons of cocaine. The 4 outboard motors on one of many go-fast boats is riddled with bullet holes as a result of the navy fired on the vessel to power it to cease.
A Colombian naval officer walks previous a confiscated drug sub.
John Otis for NPR
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John Otis for NPR
Nonetheless, the navy nearly by no means makes use of deadly power, preferring as a substitute to take suspected drug traffickers alive to face authorized costs and supply intelligence.
Just like the Europeans, Colombian authorities have seen no pause in drug smuggling within the wake of the U.S. bombing marketing campaign. One navy captain concerned in counternarcotics operations, who requested to stay nameless for his personal security, pointed to 2 current seizures of go-fast boats, one carrying two tons of cocaine, the opposite four-and-a-half tons.
Drug boats, he stated “are still going out.”
Ben Stechschulte, a Tampa-based lawyer who has defended suspected drug smugglers in U.S. federal courtroom, stated that once they lose a number of boats, traffickers merely shrug it off, change a few of their routes, and launch extra boats.
“I don’t think it has any deterrent effect,” he stated of the U.S. bombing marketing campaign. “The drug cartels understand it’s the cost of doing business.'”
Some households of the fisherman killed within the strikes are actually taking authorized motion. On Tuesday civil rights attorneys filed a federal lawsuit towards the U.S. authorities on behalf of the households of two males from a small fishing village in Trinidad who had been killed in a U.S. strike on October 14.
In a separate December case, the household of Colombian nationwide Alejandro Carranza, killed in one other strike, filed a human rights criticism with the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights, a part of the Group of American States.
In the meantime, the boat bombings proceed to upend the lives of Colombian fishermen like Cervantes. Alongside three crew members, he hauls in his nets, mentioning a number of sea bass and 14 lobsters that flop throughout the underside of the boat.
It isn’t a lot for a day’s work however at the least they’re nonetheless fishing.
Against this, some fishermen have been so traumatized by watching movies of the boat bombings that they not enterprise out to sea, says Fermin Pérez, vp of one of many native fisher’s affiliation.
“But we need to fish because that’s how we live,” he says. “That’s how we eat.”
