Hegseth Announces Another Strike In The Caribbean

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsett announced on Friday that the US had carried out a new strike against a ship allegedly belonging to drug traffickers.

The operation took place in the Caribbean against a group identified by Hegseth as the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.

Hegseth said “six male narco-terrorists” were on board and were killed.

USA performed a series of strikes of ships in the region, which President Donald Trump described as an attempt to curb drug trafficking.

Hegseth posted a video on X showing the operation. It begins by showing a boat at gunpoint before exploding in a cloud of smoke.

This is the tenth crackdown by the Trump administration against suspected drug traffickers since early September. Most were struck off South America, in the Caribbean, but on October 21 and 22 there were strikes in the Pacific Ocean.

Members of the US Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have raised concerns about the legality of the strikes and the president’s authority to order them.

On September 10, 25 Democratic U.S. senators wrote to the White House and argued that the administration had struck a ship days earlier “without evidence that the persons on board and the ship’s cargo posed a threat to the United States.”

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, has argued that such strikes require congressional approval.

Trump said he had the legal authority to order the strikes and designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization.

“We’re allowed to do this, and if we do (it) on land, we might go back to Congress,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that “if people want to stop seeing drug ships blown up, stop sending drugs into the United States.”

The six deaths in the operation, announced by Hegseth on Friday, brought to at least 43 people killed in the US strikes.

These strikes are still believed to be not only about drug trafficking, but also about putting military pressure on the government of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

He is a longtime foe of Donald Trump, who has long accused him of being the leader of a drug-trafficking organization, something he denies.