The U.S. military on Wednesday killed another four people accused by the Trump administration of trafficking narcotics by sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced, as the administration’s lethal campaign continued to expand.
Mr. Hegseth said on social media that the strike took place in international waters and was directed at a boat that he said was operated by a “designated terrorist organization” in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Wednesday’s strike came two days after the deadliest known set of strikes since President Trump authorized the military to begin targeting people aboard boats in the seas of Latin America last month. On Monday, Mr. Hegseth said, 14 men were killed in three strikes on four boats. More than 60 people have been killed in the U.S. campaign in total.
The president has named and targeted a number of drug cartels as “narco-terrorists” and maintains that they are now enemy combatants who can be killed at will.
“The Western Hemisphere is no longer a safe haven for narco-terrorists bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans,” Mr. Hegseth said in his social media post. He said the Pentagon would “continue to hunt them down and eliminate them wherever they operate.”
The defense secretary’s announcement was accompanied by a 22-second video of a boat that was apparently struck and engulfed in flames.
Mr. Hegseth did not provide geographic details, beyond saying the strike took place in the eastern Pacific. After launching a series of strikes in the Caribbean Sea near the coast of Venezuela, the Trump administration has more recently directed the U.S. military to strike boats in the eastern Pacific, off the coast of Colombia.
A broad range of outside experts in laws governing the use of armed force have said the campaign is illegal because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even criminal suspects — who are not directly participating in armed hostilities. But the Trump administration has asserted that the president has the power to “determine,” without any authorization from Congress, that drug cartels and those who work for them are enemy combatants.
Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that each destroyed boat saves 25,000 American lives. In reality, as many as 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, but most of those deaths are the result of fentanyl, which comes from labs in Mexico. South America produces cocaine.
The latest strike came as a growing number of Republican senators have privately expressed unease about being left out of the administration’s deliberations. Some have signaled an openness to backing legislation that would require the administration to seek approval from Congress before continuing additional strikes. There is also increased concern among lawmakers that the administration may expand its campaign to include strikes on land targets in Venezuela.
Seeking to address concerns about the expanding military campaign, national security officials held a briefing on Wednesday for Republican senators about recent strikes, drawing criticism from Democrats, who have repeatedly pressed for legal justification for the campaign.
Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican member of the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, who has urged the administration to take congressional oversight seriously, said that he did not realize Democrats would not be included in the classified meeting until after it began.
“I would have preferred it to have been bipartisan, which is normally the way that we do things within Intel and also within Armed Services,” he said.
On Thursday, Pentagon officials are expected to hold briefings for both Democrats and Republicans who sit on the House Armed Services Committee, according to two people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss them.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that excluding “half the Senate” from the Wednesday briefing was “indefensible and dangerous.” He added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as the national security adviser, had recently committed to providing senators with justification from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel for the strikes.
Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona and a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, said on Wednesday that he was included in an earlier briefing from White House and Pentagon officials, but that the officials did not provide a clear legal explanation. “They had themselves all tied in knots and trying to explain why this is legal to do,” he said.
Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the Intelligence Committee, noted that it was a common practice for officials to brief members separately by party. “I’m sure the other side can get the same thing,” he added.
But Mr. Kelly dismissed that reasoning.
“We’re talking about our national security,” he said. “We’re talking about the safety of our service members, and when we decide to put them at risk and possible escalation into a war with Venezuela. That has never been a partisan thing, and I hope it doesn’t start with this.”
Eric Schmitt, Charlie Savage and Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.
