The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has declared recent reporting that he may have illegally ordered all people to be killed in a military strike in the Caribbean as “fake news” on Friday evening, adding that the series of strikes of people on boats have been “lawful under both US and international law”.
Hegseth lambasted reports about his role in the strike as “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland”.
The remarks came after a Washington Post report this week alleged that Hegseth ordered defense officials to “kill everybody” traveling on a boat that was being surveilled by analysts on 2 September, the first strike of many carried out in recent months by the Trump administration. The White House said – without proof – that the people in the boats in the Caribbean, killed in Pentagon operations, were drug smugglers.
Following the Washington Post’s reporting, two senators – Republican Roger Wicker and Democrat Jack Reed – released a statement saying the Senate armed services committee will be investigating the boat strikes.
“The Committee is aware of recent news reports – and the Department of Defense’s initial response – regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” the senators wrote in a joint statement.
“The Committee has directed inquires to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances.”
During the 2 September operation, led by the elite counterterrorist group Seal Team 6, a first missile strike left two survivors clinging on to the wreck, the Post reported. Adm Frank M “Mitch” Bradley, head of Special Operations Command, reportedly ordered a second strike to kill the two survivors to comply with Hegseth’s orders.
Some current and former US officials and experts have said, according to the Post, that the Trump administration’s missile strikes in the Caribbean may be unlawful. To date, more than 80 people have been killed in the series of military strikes, targeting at least 22 more boats.
Historically, the US government has interdicted drug-trafficking boats in the water and prosecuted the alleged smugglers.
The Trump administration has accused all people on the boats in the Caribbean of being drug traffickers, saying they were primarily members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has been a major focus of the administration. Most of the boats have departed from Venezuela, where US government political pressure continues to mount.
“The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people,” Hegseth said in a social media post on Friday evening. “Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization. The administration has also accused the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, of being the head of the Cartel de los Soles, a purported drug-trafficking organization made up of top Venezuelan government and military officials. Although the administration has also declared the Cartel de los Soles to be a terrorist organization, organized crime experts say the group is a loose network of lower-ranking military officials without a strict hierarchical structure.
Trump has said that the US is attacking the boats due to high rates of fentanyl-related overdose deaths. But lawmakers, narcotics experts and former law enforcement officials have rejected that claim, since fentanyl does not come from Venezuela.
A report from the Associated Press this month has cast doubts on the Trump administration’s claims about the boat strikes. It details of the lives of a number of men who were killed, revealing that although some of the men were indeed running drugs, they were ‘“not narco-terrorists or leaders of a cartel or gang”.
Venezuelan officials, and some other nations, have denounced the administration’s strikes in the Caribbean, saying it is a violation of due process. The Venezuelan ambassador to the UN called the attacks “extrajudicial executions”.
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the alleged traffickers pose a direct threat to the US, leading them to say they are in “armed conflict” with the groups. The Guardian reported this week that the Trump administration is framing the strikes as a self-defense effort on behalf of US allies in the region. Throughout the course of the strikes, there have only been a few survivors, including an Ecuadorian man and a Colombian man, who were captured by the US then returned to their home countries.
One boat strike in October, off the Pacific coast of Mexico, led to the Mexican navy to begin a search-and-rescue operation for survivors targeted in a strike.
Internally, Department of Defense officials have been quietly raising concern about the boat strikes. A senior military lawyer disagreed with the Trump administration that the strikes are lawful and was later sidelined by other officials, NBC reported. And Adm Alvin Holsey, the commander overseeing the attacks against boat strikes, stepped down in October. Although the reason behind Holsey’s departure is unknown, the New York Times reported he had raised internal concerns about the attacks on the boats.
