President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended a U.S. strike on a speedboat in the Caribbean which he said was carrying drugs to the United States. The strike killed 11 alleged Venezuelan gang members aboard, whom he called “terrorists.” On social media, the President shared a video of what appeared to be a speedboat with people on it exploding.
The deadly attack was a departure from traditional interdiction of ships suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters. In the past, U.S. authorities (from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard) board such boats/ships, seize the drugs and identify suspects to build a criminal case.
BBC News reported that since the U.S. is not engaged in war with Venezuela, the strike “runs afoul of the right to life under international human rights law.”
[Note: While Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Fox & Friends on Wednesday that administration officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing,” neither he, nor the White House, has so far provided evidence about who or what was on the boat.]
U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, spoke about the attack on Newsmax.
Rand Paul: “The reason we have trials and we don’t automatically assume guilt is what if we make a mistake and they happen to be people fleeing the Venezuelan dictator? … off our coast it isn’t our policy just to blow people up … even the worst people in our country, if we… pic.twitter.com/UpKVFAy5XU
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 3, 2025
Paul said: “We assume these people were bad people and drug dealers, but if they were caught off the coast of Miami, we would stop the boat. They don’t shoot at us, we don’t shoot at them, they’re confiscated, they’re put in jail, and they go through a trial to prove what they were doing.”
The Senator said: “The reason we have trials and we don’t automatically assume guilt is, what if we make a mistake?” Paul added: “Off our coast, it isn’t our policy to just blow people up.”
Newsmax host Rob Schmitt argued: “But if we’re at war, we blow up bad guys all the time. I think that’s what they’re saying, that it’s a war,” and noted the hundreds of thousands of Americans have died due to fentanyl use, contending: “So it does feel like a war.”
Paul explained: “In our country, war is the exception. So when we have a war, it was intended that we would declare a war, there would be a big vote of our Congress.”
He added: “It’s a little harder here because this is a crime and this is a criminal syndicate…so listen, no love lost for the people who died that are trying to infiltrate our country with this filth, but at the same time you have to realize that it’s not as simple as it sounds…Sometimes you have to figure out who people are before you kill them.”
Note: At a press conference after the deadly attack, Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the tradition of interdiction “doesn’t work,” and claimed that what will stop drug cartels is “when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”
Note: The New York Times reported that Rubio said the speedboat was likely headed to Trinidad or another country in the Caribbean, not the U.S., as President Trump said in the Oval Office.