U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he has every authorization needed for strikes in the Caribbean by the U.S. military against vessels allegedly carrying illegal drugs just off the coast of Venezuela.
Hegseth was speaking in a Fox News interview broadcast on Sunday. The United States killed four people in a strike on Friday, at least the fourth such attack in recent weeks.
“We have every authorization needed. These are designated as foreign terrorist organizations,” Hegseth said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing.”
“If you’re in our hemisphere, if you’re in the Caribbean, if you’re north of Venezuela and you want to traffic drugs to the United States, you are a legitimate target of the United States military,” Hegseth said.
The move comes after Trump declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and stated that the United States is currently engaged in an “armed conflict” with those organizations, according to a memo to Congress.
“Although friendly foreign nations have made significant efforts to combat these organizations, suffering significant losses of life, these groups are now transnational and conduct ongoing attacks throughout the Western Hemisphere as organized cartels,” said a report obtained by The Epoch Times on Thursday.
It also said Trump has “determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
Trump on Sunday said the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean had halted drug trafficking from South America.
“There’s no drugs coming into the water. And we’ll look at what phase 2 is,” he told reporters at the White House.
Aside from Friday’s attack, the U.S. military last month carried out three deadly strikes against boats in the Caribbean that the U.S. government accused of ferrying drugs. At least two of those operations were carried out on vessels that originated from Venezuela.
Trump said the U.S. military is seeing fewer vessels in the Caribbean since the first strike was carried out, but that the cartels are still smuggling drugs by land.
“We’re telling the cartels right now we’re going to be stopping them, too,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Sept. 15. “When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats … but maybe by talking about it a little bit, it won’t happen. If it doesn’t happen, that’s good.”
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips and Reuters contributed to this report.
