Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the U.S. will continue to blow up suspected drug vessels instead of just intercepting them, citing orders from President Donald Trump.
Speaking to reporters in Mexico City, Rubio said Trump made the call for the military to blow up a boat that American officials suspected was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the U.S., foregoing the option to simply stop the boat.
“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday in Mexico City a day after Trump disclosed the strike, which marks a major escalation in his administration’s crusade against drug trafficking.
Stopping boats and capturing smugglers is ineffective, Rubio continued.
“The United States has long, for many, many years, established intelligence that allow us to interdict and stop drug boats,” he said. “We did that, and it doesn’t work.”
“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” he continued.
When asked if the military gave the boat a warning, Rubio replied: “The president has a right to eliminate immediate threats to the United States. This president is not a talker, he’s a doer.”
The strike killed 11 people.
Trump made similar remarks earlier Wednesday when asked why he didn’t simply have the boats intercepted.
“There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people, and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said at the White House. “Obviously, they won’t be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won’t be doing it again. When they watch that tape, they’re going to say, ‘Let’s not do this.’”
Vice President JD Vance also told reporters Wednesday that the people on the boat were “literal terrorists” attempting to bring in “deadly drugs.”
However, experts told The New York Times that Venezuela plays little to no role in the fentanyl trade. That drug is almost exclusively produced in Mexico using chemicals imported from China.
The strike came amid the U.S. building up a major Navy presence in the waters near Venezuela. The country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, who has denied U.S. accusations of drug trafficking, said Monday it constituted “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years.”
CORRECTION: This article was amended to correct an editing error and reflect that the allegations that Maduro is personally involved in drug trafficking have not yet been proven.