Trump says stopping suspected drug boats doesn’t work. But the US reports record cocaine seizures
MIAMI (AP) — In Justification US attacked military boats President Donald Trump, who is suspected of drug smuggling, has suggested that the long-held U.S. strategy to ban such ships at sea has been a major failure.
“We’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he said last month, “and it’s been completely ineffective.”
Trump’s comments coincided with the US Coast Guard’s announcement that it had broken the record for cocaine seizures; this was an increase of 225 metric tons of drugs from the previous year. But the turning point did not deter the Republican president from overturning decades of U.S. counternarcotics policy.
The US army was blown up during the Trump era 20 suspected drug shipsin conclusion 80 deathsin the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Trump and other senior officials have alleged that such boats are operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members with deadly drugs bound for America.
Strikes caused international outcry foreign leadershuman rights groups, Democrats and some Republicans Those who expressed concerns that the United States was intervening extrajudicial killings This damages his reputation in the world.
Drug war veterans, meanwhile, say U.S. resources would be better spent, especially in the long term, by doubling down on the traditional approach of interdicting drug boats. This is because drug ship crews often have valuable intelligence that can help authorities better target cartels and smuggling networks. They say dead men tell no tales.
Coast Guard has long struggled with drugs
For decades, the Coast Guard had been interdicting small ships suspected of smuggling illegal drugs. Much of this effort focuses on interception of cocaine shipments, much of which is produced in the Colombian forests.
Working with partner countries and other federal agencies (the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State and Justice departments, and U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force-South in Key West, Florida), the goal is to inflict heavy losses on traffickers and limit the amount of drugs entering the United States.
This campaign has never been more successful, at least in one respect, despite the Coast Guard’s constant complaints that it lacks the funding to seize more drugs.
The Coast Guard’s last record cocaine seizure was nearly 40% higher than the annual average for the past decade. The transport contained 38 tonnes of cocaine, which was unloaded by the cutter Hamilton when he returned from a two-month patrol. This was the largest amount seized by a single Coast Guard ship during a deployment, the Coast Guard reported. The bans continued even during the federal government shutdown as part of what became known as Operation Pacific Viper, and some cutters reported major seizures last month.
In almost every case, Drug traffickers were brought to the USA An investigation was launched and valuable information was collected about the ever-changing smuggling routes and production methods; without any loss of life and at a much lower cost to American taxpayers. Each missile strike would likely cost far more than the cocaine load on each ship, experts said.
“The Coast Guard has extraordinary powers and authority to enforce effective drug interdiction without killing unidentified persons on small boats,” said Douglas Farah, a Latin American national security expert and president of IBI Consultants. “When resourced, they are far more effective, sustainable, and likely legal than current Pentagon-led operations.”
Trump administration officials say strategy needs to change
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the change in strategy this week, saying “bans alone are not effective.”
He added that the bans were too limited to have a deterrent effect. “These drug organizations have already grasped the fact that they could lose 5% of their drug shipments. That doesn’t stop them from coming.”
Part of the problem, officials and experts say, is that demand for cocaine is high and the supply has never been stronger. One sign of this trend: Cocaine prices have been at historic lows for more than a decade.
And the Coast Guard doesn’t have enough ships or crew to stop all this. It doesn’t even seize up to 10% of the cocaine that authorities believe is flowing into the U.S. in small ships from what’s known as the “Transit Zone,” a vast offshore area larger than Russia.
Cocaine shipments destined for the United States first reach Central America from the west coast of South America and then reach the United States by land via Mexico. Shipments bound for Europe are smuggled through the Caribbean, often hidden on container ships.
Such interdiction efforts target cocaine, not fentanyl
Trump claimed in social media posts that his attacks blew up boats carrying fentanyl and that each ship destroyed saved 25,000 American lives. According to experts and former US counternarcotics officials, Trump’s statements are either exaggerated or false.
Over the past decade, U.S. officials have become alarmed that overdose deaths, particularly from opioids and synthetic opioids, are on the rise in the United States. Overdose deaths from opioids It peaked at 112,000 in 2023 but fell to 74,000 in April. Experts said this decline was largely attributed to the Biden administration’s efforts to increase the availability of life-saving drugs that prevent overdose deaths.
The drug flowing from South America to the USA is cocaine. Fentanyl, on the other hand, is brought to the United States by land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals generally imported from China and India. Deaths from cocaine overdose are less common than deaths from fentanyl. Fewer than 20,000 people in America died of cocaine overdoses last year, according to federal data.
Trump and administration officials have also claimed that the crews of the targeted ships were narco-terrorists or cartel members.
The Associated Press visited an area in Venezuela where some of the suspicious boats had departed and identified four people killed in the attacks. In dozens of interviews, residents and their relatives said: Most of the dead men were laborers or fishermen earning $500 per trip.
Law enforcement officials and experts echoed those findings, saying smugglers caught by the Coast Guard were hired for a pittance to move drugs from point A to point B.
“They’re hardly the ringleaders,” said Kendra McSweeney, an Ohio State University geographer who has studied U.S. drug policies for years.
Trump administration officials have recently encouraged major seizures
In April, months before Trump launched his military campaign, his attorney general, Pam Bondi, traveled to South Florida to welcome home the Coast Guard cutter James from his last counternarcotics patrol. 20 tons of cocaine worth over $500 million were seized.
Standing alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, she praised the “prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven approach to stopping these criminal enterprises.”
“This is not a drop in the bucket,” said Bondi, standing in front of the ship filled with colorful, plastic-wrapped bales of narcotics several meters high. “You’ve got half a billion dollars’ worth of pure, uncut cocaine behind you.”
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Mustian reported from Natchitoches, Louisiana. Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
