Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that President Donald Trump had directed his department to carry out three lethal, kinetic strikes on four ships carrying narcotics in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Across the three strikes, 14 “narco-terrorists were killed,” Hegseth wrote on X, Tuesday morning.
A Pentagon official, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Associated Press that the strikes were conducted off the coast of Colombia.
Following one strike, U.S. military personnel spotted a man clinging to some wreckage.
Regarding this man, Hegseth said, United States Southern Command “immediately initiated search and rescue standard protocols,” and Mexican search and rescue authorities “accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.”
Trump turns up the heat on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
Trump has approved 13 strikes against boats carrying narcotics since September, killing at least 57 people.
Hegseth explained the rationale behind the strikes at the end of his X announcement. “The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”
In mid-October, Trump told reporters he had authorized the strikes, because “they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” as the Deseret News previously reported.
Trump said Venezuela has been the “worst abuser” of illegally entering the United States.
Then last Friday, a reporter asked Trump why he has changed methods on addressing drug-trafficking. Previously the Coast Guard checked incoming boats for narcotics.
Trump responded, “It never worked. It never worked when you did it in a very politically correct manner.”
“We’ve been trying to do that for years, and so much of the drugs — 25%-30% — would come in through the seas. Right now we have none coming through the seas. … We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea; now we’ll stop it by land," he said, per previous Deseret News reporting.
U.S. agent tries to flip Maduro’s personal pilot
In an operation that spanned about 16 months, U.S. Homeland Security agent Edwin Lopez secretly tried to recruit Maduro’s chief pilot, Gen. Bitner Villegas, to deliver Maduro into American custody in exchange for money and security, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
When the pilot refused, Marshall S. Billingslea, a special presidential envoy for arms control, posted photos of Villegas on X, hinting he was in communication with the U.S.
The photos were posted just before a sanctioned plane Maduro has been known to ride took off — and it returned unexpectedly to the airport twenty minutes later.
The post was seen by 2.7 million people. It was received with shock across Venezuelan social media, and then nobody saw Villegas for several days.
Then five days later, on Sept. 24, Villegas appeared on a TV show hosted by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, wearing an air force flight suit. On air, Cabello called Villegas an “unfailing, kick-(expletive) patriot,” per The Associated Press.