By Ryan Morgan
Contributing Writer
U.S. forces in the Caribbean fired upon a drug boat from Venezuela, President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday, amid a heightened naval operation near the country.
“We, just over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat,” Trump said during White House press briefing.
The Trump administration has taken several recent steps to slow the flow of drugs northward toward the United States, including designating several Latin American criminal organizations as foreign terrorist groups.
“We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time,” Trump said Tuesday, as he discussed the new high-seas drug bust.
He said the particular drug boat came from Venezuela and said narcotics have been flowing “very heavily from Venezuela” recently.
This counter-drug action comes in the weeks after the U.S. government doubled to $50 million a reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The U.S. government has challenged the results of the last two Venezuelan presidential elections, alleging that Maduro’s past two wins were not a product of a free and fair process.
Announcing the heightened arrest reward last month, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro sits at the head of a drug trafficking operation dubbed the Cartel de los Soles, and has supported other drug cartels operating in the region, such as the Sinaloa cartel.
Both the Cartel de los Soles and the Sinaloa cartel are among the list of Latin American criminal organizations added to the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations since Trump took office.
“Today the U.S. military conducted a lethal strike in the southern [Caribbean] against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the Tuesday operation.
