Murder at sea and for what?
The US Southern Command posted a video on social media of
the bombing, which it said targeted a boat that was “transiting along known
narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in
narco-trafficking operations.”
As with the 50 previous attacks on boats in the Pacific and
the Caribbean Sea, the military did not publicize any evidence that the boat
was carrying drugs or that its passengers were “narco-terrorists.”
A small number of the at least 177 victims of the Trump
administration’s boat bombings have been identified.
The Associated Press reported in November that Robert Sánchez, who was killed
in the Caribbean, was a 42-year-old fisherman who made $100 per month and had
started helping cocaine traffickers navigate the sea due to economic pressures.
Juan Carlos Fuentes was an out-of-work bus driver who also worked as a “drug
runner” to make ends meet.
The families of at least two victims have filed legal complaints over the killings of their family
members, saying they were fishermen.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office
on Latin America has compared the
boat bombings, assuming they have targeted people involved in the drug trade at all, to
“straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Isacson noted that while Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have defended the boat bombings as attacks that will protect Americans from the flow of drugs like cocaine and fentanyl into the US—with the president informing Congress that the White House views the country as being in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels—data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows little evidence that the strikes are stopping drugs from reaching the US.
“CBP’s seizures of fentanyl at the US-Mexico border had been
declining, often sharply, since mid-2023. But since early 2025, the declines
stopped,” said Isacson. “Halfway into fiscal 2026, seizures are
almost exactly half of 2025’s full-year total: a flat trendline.”
Following Wednesday’s bombing, at least 14 people have been
killed in boat strikes in five days.
Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group emphasized Wednesday night that “despite the
administration’s rhetoric and bogus legal theories, the supposed armed conflict
with ‘narco-terrorists’ appears to be entirely make-believe.”
Under international law,
drug trafficking is treated as a crime, with US law enforcement agencies in the
past intercepting boats suspected of smuggling drugs and arresting those on
board. A coalition of rights organizations sued the
Trump administration in December, demanding documentation of the White House’s
legal justification for the boat bombings and arguing that for any organization
to be considered part of “armed conflict” with the US, it must be an “organized
armed group” that is engaged in “protracted armed violence” with the country.
“Murder,” said Finucane, “is the general term for
premeditated killing outside of armed conflict.”
