What to know about US military strikes on alleged drug boats

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The United States military strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats transiting in Latin America have killed more than 200 people since September, when the Trump administration began an operation it has justified as necessary to stem the flow of drugs.

As the strikes continue, the administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narco-terrorists” against whom U.S. President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in an “armed conflict.”

Critics have questioned the overall legality of the strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind thousands of fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. overland from Mexico. The fast boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific are known to carry cocaine, not fentanyl.

Here’s what to know about the deadly strikes.

Why did the military begin blowing up fast boats?

Trump has asserted that the longtime U.S. strategy of interdicting the boats at sea for decades has not worked. Yet, the U.S. Coast Guard set a record in 2024, the final year of former U.S. President Joe Biden's term, for cocaine seizures, hauling 225 metric tons of the drug.

The strikes began in September off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast and expanded to the Eastern Pacific in October. The deadliest month since the start of the operation was October, with 45 people killed. Most of this year’s strikes have been in the Pacific.

Trump and other senior officials have also contended that such boats are being operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members.

The Associated Press visited a region in Venezuela from which some of the suspected boats have departed and identified four men who were killed in the strikes. In several interviews, residents of the region and relatives said the dead men were mostly laborers or fishermen making $500 a trip.

Notably, the strikes started amid the largest buildup of U.S. military forces in Latin America in generations, in a pressure campaign that culminated with the January capture of Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro.

More than 60 boats have been struck in the monthslong operation.

Are the strikes effective?

Trump has claimed that the strikes have blown up boats carrying fentanyl and that each destroyed vessel has saved 25,000 American lives. According to experts and former U.S. counternarcotics officials, Trump’s statements are either exaggerations or false.

For the past decade, U.S. officials have sounded the alarm about rising overdose deaths, particularly from opioids and synthetic opioids. Overdose deaths from opioids surged during the 2021-2023 period to about 80,000 a year but dropped to an estimated 55,000 in 2024. Experts have attributed that decline partly to efforts during the last year of the Biden administration to boost the availability of lifesaving drugs that prevent overdose deaths. Federal data show the figure dropped further, reaching an estimated 44,000 last year.

Meanwhile, overdose deaths from cocaine, which is mostly produced in Colombia and Peru, are less frequent than those from fentanyl. About 22,000 people died in the U.S. from cocaine overdoses in 2024, down from more than 29,000 the year earlier, according to federal data. The number of cocaine overdose deaths went down to an estimated 19,000 in 2025.

The drug flowing to the U.S. from South America is cocaine. Fentanyl, on the other hand, typically makes it into the U.S. overland from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

Are the strikes legal?

The operation has drawn intense criticism, particularly following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. Administration officials and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.

Amanda Klasing, national director for government relations at rights watchdog Amnesty International USA, in a statement last week said the “extrajudicial killings are becoming normalized” as the death toll continues to grow.

“Not only are these killings illegal, they are immoral,” she said. “People of good conscience cannot allow this to continue, yet Congress has so far failed to halt, or even slow down, this lethal and unlawful campaign.”

In January, the families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a boat strike in October sued the federal government, calling the attack a war crime and part of an “unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign.” The complaint echoes many of the frequently articulated concerns about the boat strikes, noting for instance that they have been carried out without congressional authorization and at a time when there is no military conflict between the U.S. and drug cartels that under the laws of war could justify the lethal attacks.

“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification. Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command,” the lawsuit states.