U.S. military attacks on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean have been less effective than portrayed by the Pentagon, the White House, or in videos released on social media by President Donald Trump, according to four government officials. 

To date, the Trump administration has disclosed five attacks in its undeclared war in the Caribbean — the most recent on Tuesday. Each has been accompanied with a short aerial video posted to social media showing an explosion and the vessel bursting into flames.

The attacks have been deadly, killing 27 so far, according to the Trump administration. But the White House’s cinematic portrayal of seamless, one-shot attacks belies the fact that they have required more munitions and strikes than has been shown to the public.

One of the sources specified that a .50 caliber machine gun finally sunk the foundering vessel.

Multiple munitions were used in the majority of the first four attacks in the Caribbean, according to four government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to The Intercept. Two said that the initial four declared attacks necessitated multiple missile strikes and, in one instance, the use of an additional weapon. One of the sources specified that a .50 caliber machine gun finally sunk the foundering vessel. Two of the attacks required at least three individual munitions, the sources said. Two sources indicated that AGM-114 Hellfire missiles have been used in some of the U.S. strikes. 

Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson did not respond to detailed questions about the attacks.

During the first attack, on September 2, civilians aboard the boat survived an initial strike, two American officials familiar with the matter told The Intercept at the time. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.

The attacks on boats are part of a war being waged by the Trump administration against undisclosed enemies without the consent of Congress, according to a confidential notice that was sent to several congressional committees earlier this month. 

Trump also confirmed that he secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela on Thursday and teased coming attacks on Venezuelan territory. “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president told reporters hours after the New York Times first reported the secret CIA authorization. The unprecedented admission of ongoing CIA covert action by a U.S. president is part of a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader.

The Trump administration has portrayed the victims of its boat attacks as Venezuelan narco-terrorists, but Colombian nationals were aboard at least one of the boats sunk by the United States, according to two government officials who spoke with The Intercept. One told The Intercept that Colombians were specifically targeted in the attack. CNN first reported this on Wednesday.

“A new war zone has opened up: the Caribbean,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote on X last week, after the fourth strike. “Signs show that the last boat bombed was Colombian, with Colombian citizens inside.”

Reports have also emerged that two Trinidadians were killed in Tuesday’s attack.

Legal experts — including former government lawyers who specialized in determinations regarding the laws of war and extrajudicial killings — say the strikes are patently illegal and amount to murder. 

These assessments were echoed by Amnesty International USA’s director for security and human Rights Daphne Eviatar in the wake of the latest U.S. boat strike. “There is no plausible legal justification for the Trump administration to use the U.S. military to kill whoever it unilaterally deems a terrorist,” she said. “These airstrikes outrageously flout international law and set a dangerous precedent for other leaders around the world. Congress must do everything in its power to stop these murders and hold those responsible accountable.”

Trump unilaterally decided that the United States is engaged in a declared state of “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations,” or DTOs, according to the congressional notice, which offered the first detailed information on the legal underpinnings for the attacks. It describes three people killed by U.S. commandos on a boat in the Caribbean last month as “unlawful combatants,” as if they were soldiers on a battlefield. 

“The President directed the Department of War to conduct operations against [DTOs] pursuant to the law of armed conflict,” reads the notice. “The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.”

Trump has made numerous incoherent statements about the strikes he says are aimed at “water drugs.” At the United Nations last month, Trump twice said that he had designated drug cartels as “forests”; he then clarified that he had actually designated them as “foreign terrorist organizations.” When it was suggested that the attacks were illegal last month, Trump responded: “What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat and the drugs that are being sent into our country, and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs.” Around 80,000 Americans actually died of drug overdoses last year. The White House would not comment on Trump’s wildly inaccurate figures.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has produced a classified legal opinion that justifies the lethal strikes, according to three government officials. The opinion argues that the president can authorize summary executions of members of designated cartels because they pose an imminent threat to Americans.

Legal experts said that the opinion provides the president with legal cover to designate drug traffickers as enemy combatants and kill them without due process. This is a major deviation from standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs, in which the Coast Guard interdicted drug-trafficking vessels and arrested smugglers, as opposed to summarily executing them. It also may open the door to a decapitation strike or other method of regime change aimed at Maduro, one government official suggested, citing Trump’s acknowledged covert CIA actions, which the official noted could include anything from propaganda campaigns to lethal attacks.

The military and CIA campaigns against Venezuelan targets are part of Trump’s yearslong efforts, which failed during his first term, to topple Maduro’s government. Maduro and several close allies were indicted in a New York federal court in 2020 on federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. More recently, the U.S. doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million.

The administration has asserted in legal filings that Maduro controls the gang Tren de Aragua. But an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies contradicts that conclusion. The Trump administration also asserts that the rival the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns — which it added to a list of specially designated global terrorist groups earlier this year — is also headed by Maduro and high-ranking officials in his administration. Experts say the Cartel de los Soles is not an actual cartel but shorthand for a patronage system tied to drug smuggling and other illicit activities.

The Trump administration’s repeated claims that Maduro leads multiple cartels may be a pretext to killing or arresting him as part of a counternarcotics operation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also recently described Maduro as the leader of “a terrorist organization and organized crime organization that have taken over a country.”

Maduro spoke out against “CIA-led coups” on Wednesday, likening Trump’s current efforts to the CIA-aided overthrow of President Salvador Allende in Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1973 and the U.S.-backed military dictatorship in Argentina which took power, with tacit U.S. support, in 1976. He called on the American people to be “alert to avoid a war in the Caribbean and in South America.”

“No to regime change that reminds us so much of the failed eternal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,” he said in a speech. “No to coups d’etat by the CIA, that remind us so much of the 30,000 people disappeared by the CIA, in the coups d’etat against Argentina, Pinochet’s coup d’etat, and the 5,000 young people murdered and disappeared in coup d’etat after coup d’etat in Latin America. Latin America doesn’t want them. Doesn’t need them.”

The U.S. has conducted a substantial military build-up in the Caribbean since the summer, flooding the region with around 10,000 troops. The Navy has sent eight surface warships and a submarine to the region.

Self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force in the Southern Command area of operations last Friday. He declared it would “crush the cartels, stop the poison, and keep America safe.”

The new JTF will operate under the aegis of II Marine Expeditionary Force, a massive air/ground force that consists of more than 47,000 Marines and sailors, and boasts “the capability for projecting offensive combat power ashore while sustaining itself in combat without external assistance for a period of 60 days.”

“By forming a JTF around II MEF headquarters, we enhance our ability to detect, disrupt, and dismantle illicit trafficking networks faster and at greater depth — together with our U.S. and partner-nation counterparts,” said Adm. Alvin Holsey, the SOUTHCOM commander, in an October 10 statement. Lt. Gen. Calvert Worth, the commander of II MEF and the JTF chief added that his “team will leverage maritime patrols, aerial surveillance, precision interdictions, and intelligence sharing to counter illicit traffic.” A week later, the New York Times reported that Holsey was stepping down as SOUTHCOM commander, less than a year into the role.

SOUTHCOM refused to even provide the official name of the task force, much less details about its size and makeup. “We have nothing further to add,” SOUTHCOM spokesperson Jose Ruiz told The Intercept in response to questions.

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