The cost of state-sanctioned murder
By Sharon Zhang
This article was originally published by Truthout
The Trump administration’s operations in Latin America over the past seven months have cost nearly $5 billion, finds a new analysis — enough to fund Medicaid for half a million Americans for a year.
Thus far, the combination of the military costs for the deadly raid of Venezuela and abduction of then-President Nicolás Maduro as well as the U.S.’s boat strike and surveillance campaign in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea is at least $4.7 billion, according to an analysis released on Thursday by the Brown University Watson School of International and Public Affairs’s Costs of War project.
Naval deployment is the single most costly factor, the report finds, at $3.8 billion between August of 2025 and March of 2026.
This amount only reflects public information on naval, aircraft, and Special Operations deployment, as well as costs of equipment and munitions used, pulled from the Congressional Budget Office, researchers noted. It does not reflect costs from any covert operations like potential Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) programs that Donald Trump has hinted at.
The “cost estimate would likely increase significantly” if these operations were included, the authors write. Further, the authors note that the “greatest costs may be yet to come,” as the boat strike campaign, which has killed 180 civilians so far, is set to continue indefinitely.


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