Pentagon Admits It Has No Idea Who’s on “Drug Boats” Being Bombed A Democratic lawmaker revealed the shocking detail after a Pentagon briefing for mem
By Hafiz Rashid/The New Republic
October 30, 2025
4:59 p.m. ET
The Trump administration has admitted that they are not trying to identify anyone aboard boats they accuse of sending drugs to the U.S. before bombing the vessels.
Speaking to CNN Thursday, Democratic Representative Sara Jacobs said she was told in a Pentagon briefing “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes” and that was part of the reason why the administration has not sought to detain or prosecute the survivors of the strikes, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
As far as the legal justification the White House is using to blow up boats in the waters surrounding Latin America, that information has only been available to select Republicans.
“There’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” Jacobs said, adding that she was told that the only drug targeted in the strikes so far was cocaine, which Pentagon officials called “a facilitating drug of fentanyl.”
The U.S. has killed at least 61 people in more than a dozen airstrikes on boats in the western hemisphere that it claims are smuggling drugs and are part of “designated terrorist organizations.” The attacks have prompted criticism from countries in the region, including Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico, and several of the people killed in the strikes have been identified as fishermen.
Even some Republicans in Congress, such as Representative Mike Turner and Senator Rand Paul, have expressed misgivings about the strikes, with Paul calling them “extrajudicial killings.” Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to be planning to go even further, with the president bragging that he wants to begin strikes on land and Hegseth moving 14 percent of the U.S. Navy fleet to the Caribbean Sea. It seems that a war has been declared in all but name.
October 30, 2025
4:59 p.m. ET
The Trump administration has admitted that they are not trying to identify anyone aboard boats they accuse of sending drugs to the U.S. before bombing the vessels.
Speaking to CNN Thursday, Democratic Representative Sara Jacobs said she was told in a Pentagon briefing “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes” and that was part of the reason why the administration has not sought to detain or prosecute the survivors of the strikes, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
As far as the legal justification the White House is using to blow up boats in the waters surrounding Latin America, that information has only been available to select Republicans.
“There’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” Jacobs said, adding that she was told that the only drug targeted in the strikes so far was cocaine, which Pentagon officials called “a facilitating drug of fentanyl.”
The U.S. has killed at least 61 people in more than a dozen airstrikes on boats in the western hemisphere that it claims are smuggling drugs and are part of “designated terrorist organizations.” The attacks have prompted criticism from countries in the region, including Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico, and several of the people killed in the strikes have been identified as fishermen.
Even some Republicans in Congress, such as Representative Mike Turner and Senator Rand Paul, have expressed misgivings about the strikes, with Paul calling them “extrajudicial killings.” Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to be planning to go even further, with the president bragging that he wants to begin strikes on land and Hegseth moving 14 percent of the U.S. Navy fleet to the Caribbean Sea. It seems that a war has been declared in all but name.
