President Donald Trump said that the U.S. carried out a strike on a dock facility in Venezuela—the first known U.S. land strike in the country amid the Trump Administration’s pressure campaign on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Trump told reporters on Monday that the U.S. had “hit” a “dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The U.S. is also continuing its deadly attacks on alleged drug vessels in the region as part of what Trump has called an “armed conflict” with cartels. The news of the dock strike came the same day that U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the country’s military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced on X that, at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the military launched another strike against a boat believed to have been “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific” and that was allegedly “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” The military provided no evidence to support that allegation. Two men were killed in the strike.
Here’s what to know about the situation.
The first known U.S. strike inside Venezuela
Trump said on Monday that there was a “major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.”
“They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area,” the President said. “It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”
Trump had previously said in a Friday radio interview on WABC that the U.S. “knocked out” what he described as “a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from” two nights before.
Neither the President nor his Administration has provided any additional information about the strike.
But CNN and the New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the CIA conducted the attack earlier in December on a dock that U.S. officials suspected a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua—which the Trump Administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization—was using to hold drugs. Officials believed that the gang may have been readying to transport those narcotics onto boats, according to the Times. No one was at the facility when the attack took place, per the reports.
Maduro has not yet publicly commented on the land strike.
Trump ramping up pressure on Maduro
For months, the Trump Administration has been conducting strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean on more than two dozen boats it has accused of smuggling drugs. The strikes have sparked controversy among lawmakers and legal experts, many of whom have questioned whether there is a legal justification for such attacks. That controversy amplified after news emerged that the U.S. military conducted a “double-tap” strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2, launching a follow-up strike on the boat after an initial hit and killing two survivors.
The Administration has also expanded the U.S. military presence in the area with more than 15,000 troops and about a dozen ships, including the country’s biggest aircraft carrier.
Trump and Administration officials have said that the moves are meant to combat the transportation of drugs into the U.S. But many, including the Venezuelan government, view them as an effort to expel Maduro from power.
Read more: The Day After: Trump Advisors and Venezuela Opposition Leaders Plan for Maduro’s Departure
Trump announced on Truth Social in late November that “airlines, pilots, drug dealers, and human traffickers” should consider “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” Weeks later, he said he had ordered a blockade on “all sanctioned oil tankers” going in and out of the country.
The President has repeatedly threatened to further escalate the pressure campaign against Maduro—who the U.S. Department of Justice indicted in 2020 during Trump’s first term on charges of narcoterrorism—by ordering land strikes in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan President has denied any ties to the illegal drug trade, and his government has condemned Trump’s threats and moves targeting the country. Maduro said this fall that Venezuela was “ready for an armed fight, if it’s necessary.”
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