Trump aims to expand efforts against cartels as effectiveness of deadly boat strikes draws criticism
by Tom Howell Jr. · The Washington TimesPresident Trump is leaning into his plan deploying lethal force against “ISIS”-like drug cartels, dismissing critics who say the operation hasn’t reined in enough drug consumption in the U.S. to justify its costs.
Mr. Trump used the GOP midterm convention to highlight deadly boat strikes as something “no other president had the courage to do,” and told the U.N. General Assembly he planned to eliminate cartels from the Western Hemisphere.
“Like ISIS, they should be killed, exiled, or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we’re doing,” Mr. Trump told global leaders. “To that end, the United States has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats, destroying 97% of the drugs coming into the ocean and sea. You’ve seen it.”
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Mr. Trump’s decision to double down on deadly strikes is a direct challenge to Democrats, who want stricter oversight of the attacks because they lack congressional authorization and lawmakers worry the killings override due process.
Senior Democrats on national security committees released a war powers resolution on Sept. 2 to block the administration from continuing to use U.S. Armed Forces to conduct strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
“It remains unclear whether these operations have made any real difference in stemming the flow of illegal drugs into the United States, and they were never authorized by Congress,” Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, Gregory W. Meeks of New York, Adam Smith of Washington and Jim Himes of Connecticut said to mark the one-year anniversary of the mission. “A year later, the administration has little to show for this lawless campaign except a mounting body count, a massive price tag, and a stain on the American conscience.”
At least 230 people have been killed in about 70 strikes since the campaign began in September 2025. The figure includes more than a dozen people who are missing and presumed dead.
The campaign, dubbed Operation Southern Spear, is centered on the eastern Pacific but has included strikes in the Caribbean.
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Most recently, the military said it killed three crew members in a strike on an alleged drug-moving boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 9.
Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor who tracks drug issues, said there is “no available evidence that U.S. cocaine consumption has changed in the past year.”
“The good news has come from the decline in the fentanyl supply, which does not involve Venezuela,” Mr. Humphreys said.
Fentanyl is the leading killer in the drug overdose crisis, though most of it is trafficked over the southern border with Mexico or through ports of entry.
U.S. overdose deaths remain elevated but have steadily ticked downward since the middle of the Biden administration, with some experts pointing to disruptions in the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals.
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Experts say the main drug flowing from South America by sea is cocaine, and the results of the boat strikes are a mixed bag.
“There are some intangible ways the boat strikes may have been effective. Drug-boat pilot recruitment has reportedly become more expensive according to some sources, and it’s possible that they have dented the profits of some drug-trafficking networks or removed some experienced navigators,” said Gil Guerra, a fellow at the Hudson Institute who specializes in U.S. strategy for the Western Hemisphere. “But for cocaine headed specifically to the U.S., the measurable impact seems to have been temporary.”
He said based on publicly available records, the strikes seem to have led to a temporary spike in cocaine prices, due to a supply shock, but prices “have since hit recent lows and purity levels have remained high.”
A Washington Post report in late July said an internal Drug Enforcement Administration analysis found the boat strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the U.S., and that traffickers were using alternate methods and routes in place of fast boats in international waters.
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“Even if we assume every strike was of a drug boat, there are many other ways available for sending drugs to the U.S., from airplanes to submarines to the mail system,” Mr. Humphreys said.
Mr. Trump frequently boasts that his boat strikes stopped 97% of drugs being smuggled by water.
Fact-checkers at the Associated Press and elsewhere say this is based on drug-seizure data from selected months before and after the campaign began – 224,805 pounds of drugs in July 2025 versus 4,560 pounds in November 2025. This data cannot account for drugs that were not intercepted and went undetected, possibly through new routes.
A government inspector general report on Operation Southern Spear said drug trafficking remains a moving target, complicating Mr. Trump’s mission.
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“Experts on the U.S. illicit drug trade have noted that [trafficking organizations] have adopted alternate smuggling methods, such as shifting to land routes through Central America or placing cocaine in container ships often hidden among legitimate goods, while absorbing the occasional loss of shipments on small boats,” the report said.
The White House and DEA referred questions about the operation’s effectiveness to the Department of Defense, which did not respond to questions about the effectiveness of the campaign.
The operations against alleged drug boats haven’t been cheap, meaning cost is a dimension of the debate beyond legal and ethical concerns.
A quarterly inspector general report from the Department of Defense and the Department of State said obligations for Operation Southern Spear totaled $647 million from September 2025 to the end of March.
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A follow-up report said the government spent $174 million more through June 30, bringing the total cost to more than $820 million.
The “Costs of War” project at Brown University estimated it cost $4.7 billion to carry out both the alleged drug-boat campaign and the raid to arrest Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and extradite him to the U.S. on drug charges. Their analysis covered Aug. 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, and said the associated naval deployment cost $3.8 billion, the largest expense.
“Costs will continue to mount as some naval assets and aircraft remain in the region and strikes continue,” the project said.
Derek Maltz, a retired special agent who once ran the DEA’s special operations division, said aggressive U.S. action is disrupting cartels’ funding streams, but there is more work to do.
“The cartels have killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization in the world. They need to be treated just like ISIS,” he told The Washington Times. “The U.S. is utilizing all tools of national power to hold the terrorists accountable. Cocaine is flowing all over the world and is very dangerous to not only citizens in the U.S., but around the globe.”
Mr. Trump wants to stamp out cartels throughout the Americas, and he is enlisting more countries in the campaign.
His coalition includes Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia and Peru, which have banded together as the Shield of the Americas. Brazil and Mexico, however, are notable countries in the region that have not joined.
“I’m asking all nations in the Shield of the Americas to formally designate narco terrorists as a common threat to stability and apply crushing sanctions to all 24 U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations,” Mr. Trump said at U.N. meetings in mid-September. “You can take them out yourself. But if you can’t, we’ll do it for you.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats during a recent visit to Ecuador.
He said Latin American cartels would “eat these countries alive” if nothing was done.
On the home front, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it is thwarting drug routes of all kinds.
“Over the past year, CBP’s frontline personnel have continuously disrupted cartel operations across every environment – including land borders, airports, and seaports – and in every conveyance from commercial cargo to private vehicles and small packages,” the agency said in a written statement. “We aren’t just seizing finished drugs; we’re targeting their entire supply chain, including precursor chemicals, and stopping the southbound flow of weapons and cash.”
Combatting drug overdoses is a bipartisan endeavor, though Democrats are trying to stop the deadly boat strikes – an effort that would get a boost if their party wins House and Senate majorities in the November midterm elections.
Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly, speaking at a recent press conference with congressional Democrats, said he would like to see an investigation into the legality of the boat strikes if the party retakes the gavels.
“They are simply saying that these are narco-terrorists, and that somehow justifies blowing them out of the water and killing people,” Justice Donnelly said. “Congress has demanded oversight, and it hasn’t happened. And that’s what I would like to see, immediately.”
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Tom Howell Jr.
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