WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified the lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the United States to send an unmistakable message to Latin American cartels.
Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the U.S.
“There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people, and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while at the White House. He added, “Obviously, they won’t be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won’t be doing it again. When they watch that tape, they’re going to say, ‘Let’s not do this.’”
Tuesday’s strike was an astonishing departure from typical U.S. drug interdiction efforts at a time when Trump has ordered a major Navy buildup in the waters near Venezuela.
Later Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that such operations “will happen again.”
Rubio said previous U.S. interdiction efforts in Latin America have not worked in stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the United States and beyond.
“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio said on a visit to Mexico.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on “Fox & Friends” that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was running his country “as a kingpin of a drug narco-state.”
Hegseth said officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing.” But the Republican administration has not presented any evidence supporting Trump’s claim that operators of the vessel were from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and were trying to smuggle in drugs.
“President Trump is willing to go on offense in ways that others have not seen,” said Hegseth, who declined to detail how the strike was carried out.
Venezuela’s government, which has long minimized the presence of in the South American country, limited its reaction to the strike to questioning the veracity of a video publicized by the Trump administration showing the attack. Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez suggested it was created using artificial intelligence and described it as an “almost cartoonish animation, rather than a realistic depiction of an explosion.”
Hegseth responded that the strike “was definitely not artificial intelligence,” adding he watched live footage from Washington as the strike was carried out.
Trump and administration officials have repeatedly blamed the gang for being at the root of the violence and illicit drug dealing that plague some American cities.
The president on Tuesday repeated his claim — — that Tren de Aragua is operating under Maduro’s control.
In announcing the strike, Trump said the operation, which he said killed 11, was carried out in international waters. He also noted that the gang is designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.
Unlike its counterparts from Colombia, Brazil and Central America, Tren de Aragua has no large-scale involvement in smuggling cocaine across international borders, according to InSight Crime, which last month published a 64-page report on the gang based on two years of research.
“We’ve found no direct participation of TdA in the transnational drug trade, although there are cases of them acting as subcontractors for other drug trafficking organizations,” said Jeremy McDermott, a Colombia-based co-founder of InSight Crime, referring to the Venezuelan gang by its initials.
Still, with affiliated cells spread across Latin America, it would not be a huge leap for Tren de Aragua to one day delve deeper into the drug trade, he said. Meanwhile, the rhetoric from officials in Washington who would blame TdA as a proxy for all Venezuelan drug traffickers assures it will remain a target of intense U.S. government focus.
“It is almost impossible today to determine who is TdA and who is not,” said McDermott. “Deportations and statements from the United States suggest that TdA is now being used as a catch-all description for Venezuelan criminals acting abroad.”
Some international warfare experts are questioning the legality of the strike.
“Intentional killing outside armed conflict hostilities is unlawful unless it is to save a life immediately,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, an expert on international law and the use of force at the University of Notre Dame Law School. “No hostilities were occurring in the Caribbean.”
Hegseth was opaque in his comments on Fox about whether Trump was looking to press for “regime change” in Venezuela.
“Well, that’s a presidential decision,” Hegseth said. He added that “anyone would prefer that” Maduro “would just give himself up. But that’s a presidential-level decision.”
The U.S. announced plans last month to boost its to combat .
Maduro’s government has responded by deploying troops along Venezuela’s coast and border with neighboring Colombia, as well as by urging Venezuelans to enlist in a civilian militia.
Ryan Berg, director of the Americas program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Tuesday’s strike clearly shows governments in the region, not only Maduro, the paradigm shift brought on by the U.S. decision to declare Tren de Aragua and Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
“This is a United States that sees security differently,” Berg said. “They’ve just demonstrated the ability to use deadly force in the Western Hemisphere, and they’ve already told Mexico that they’re going to do the same thing on Mexican territory if they don’t get the level of cooperation that they want.”
The U.S. has a complicated legacy of sticking its hand in Latin American affairs, and American military interventions — particularly during the Cold War — played a major part in destabilizing governments and paving the way for coups in Guatemala, Chile and a number of Central American nations, which still grapple with the sometimes violent fallout.
In recent years, the U.S. has taken a a more subtle approach, providing foreign assistance to many countries and security forces, but not making direct strikes like what was seen in Caribbean waters.
Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Juan Ramón de la Fuente, who met with Rubio on Wednesday, underscored the importance of the Trump administration to operate in the region “without subordination” of other governments and “respecting sovereignty” of allies.
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Lee reported from Mexico City. AP writer Regina Garcia Cano and Megan Janetsky in Mexico City and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed reporting.
