The United States conducted a deadly military strike against an alleged drug boat tied to the cartel Tren de Aragua,\u00a0President Donald Trump\u00a0said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The US president said 11 people were killed in the strike in \u201cinternational waters.\u201d Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the \u201clethal strike\u201d as taking place in the \u201csouthern Caribbean\u201d against \u201ca drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n
The use of military force against Latin American drug cartels represents a significant escalation by the Trump administration and could have serious implicatons for the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere,\u201d Trump\u00a0said in a post on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The State Department designated Tren de Aragua, which originated in Venezuela, as a foreign terrorist organization and specially designated global terrorists in February.<\/p>\n
The US has amassed a large number of military assets around the Caribbean and Latin America,\u00a0drawing the ire of Venezuelan leader\u00a0Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n
CNN has asked the Venezuelan government for comment.<\/p>\n
In remarks before he departed on a trip to Mexico and Ecuador on Tuesday, Rubio said the \u201ccounter-drug mission\u201d would continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to wage combat against drug cartels that are flooding American streets and killing Americans,\u201d Rubio said. He said the route from Venezuela was a \u201ccommon\u201d one.<\/p>\n
Asked by CNN about the legal authority for militarily targeting the cartels, Rubio said, \u201cI\u2019m not going to answer for the White House counsel, suffice it to say that all of those steps were taken in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president has designated these as terrorist organizations, which is what they are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump on Tuesday afternoon said the US military \u201cjust over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug carrying boat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just happened moments ago, and our great general, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff \u2026 he gave us a little bit of a briefing,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s more where that came from,\u201d he said, noting that \u201ca lot of drugs\u201d are \u201cpouring into\u201d the US from Venezuela.<\/p>\n
A senior defense official confirmed a \u201cprecision strike\u201d against an alleged drug vessel in the southern Caribbean, but did not offer further details about the operation.<\/p>\n
CNN\u00a0previously reported that the US military was deploying more than 4,000 Marines and sailors to the waters around Latin America and the Caribbean as part of a ramped-up effort to combat drug cartels, according to two US defense officials \u2014 a show of force that has given the president a broad range of military options should he want to target drug cartels.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive approach to combating Latin American drug cartels, designating many of them as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Rubio visited the headquarters of US Southern Command, which has responsibility for the deployed assets. The top US diplomat had previously suggested that military action against the cartels was a possibility.<\/p>\n
The robust military presence in the region has drawn heated remarks from Maduro. The Trump administration has increased the bounty for the Venezuelan president to $50 million for drug trafficking.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an extravagant threat\u2026 absolutely criminal, bloody. They have wanted to move forward with what they call maximum pressure, and in the face of maximum military pressure, we have prepared maximum readiness,\u201d Maduro said Monday, adding that he will not \u201cbow to threats.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNN\u2019s Kylie Atwood, Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, Stefano Pozzebon, Ivonne Valdes Garay, Sol Amaya and Lauren Kent contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n This story and headline have been updated with additional details.<\/em><\/p>\n For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at\u00a0CNN.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The United States conducted a deadly military strike against an alleged drug boat tied to the cartel Tren<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}