President Donald Trump solutions questions from reporters throughout a roundtable on legal cartels within the State Eating Room of the White Home, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, in Washington, as Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth listens.
Evan Vucci/AP
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Evan Vucci/AP
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The U.S. navy has carried out one other deadly strike on alleged drug smugglers within the Caribbean Sea, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced Saturday.
Hegseth in a social media posting mentioned the vessel was operated by a U.S.-designated terrorist group however didn’t title which group was focused. He mentioned three folks had been killed within the strike.
It is not less than the fifteenth such strike carried out by the U.S. navy within the Caribbean or jap Pacific since early September.
“This vessel—like EVERY OTHER—was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth mentioned in a posting on X.
The U.S. navy has now killed not less than 64 folks within the strikes.
Trump has justified the assaults as a vital escalation to stem the movement of medicine into the US. He has asserted the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, counting on the identical authorized authority utilized by the Bush administration when it declared a struggle on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.
U.S. lawmakers have been repeatedly rebuffed by the White Home of their demand that the administration launch extra details about the authorized justification for the strikes in addition to higher particulars about which cartels have been focused and the people killed.
Hegseth in his Saturday posting asserting the most recent strike mentioned “narco-terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home” and the Protection Division “will treat them EXACTLY how we treated Al-Qaeda.”
Senate Democrats renewed their request for extra details about the strikes in a letter on Friday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Hegseth.
“We also request that you provide all legal opinions related to these strikes and a list of the groups or other entities the President has deemed targetable,” the senators wrote.
Amongst these signing the letter had been Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer in addition to Sens. Jack Reed, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, Chris Coons, Patty Murray and Brian Schatz.
The letter says that up to now the administration “has selectively shared what has at times been contradictory information” with some members, “while excluding others.”
Earlier Friday, the Republican chairman and rating Democrat on the Senate Armed Companies Committee launched a pair of letters despatched to Hegseth written in late September and early October requesting the division’s authorized rationale for the strikes and the checklist of drug cartels that the Trump administration has designated as terrorist organizations in its justification for the usage of navy drive.
