Pentagon Chief Suggests More Strikes on Cartels After US Military Targets Boat Near Venezuela

‘This is a deadly, serious mission for us, and it won’t stop with just this strike,’ Pete Hegseth said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Washington on June 26, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Sept. 3 that there may be additional strikes against narco-terrorists that attempt to smuggle drugs into the United States, after the U.S. military launched airstrikes against a vessel that the Trump administration said was being operated by the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.

The strike killed 11 people on board the vessel, located near Venezuela, President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Sept. 2, while also uploading a military video of the strike.

Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and several major Mexican cartels were designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the administration earlier this year.

“You want to try to traffic drugs, it’s a new day,” the defense secretary told “Fox & Friends” in a Sept. 3 interview. “It’s a different day, and so those 11 drug traffickers are no longer with us, sending a very clear signal that this is an activity the United States is not going to tolerate in our hemisphere.”

“This is a deadly, serious mission for us, and it won’t stop with just this strike,” Hegseth also told the outlet, warning that “anyone else trafficking in those waters, who we know is a designated narco-terrorist, will face the same fate, and it is important to protect our homeland and hemisphere.”

With the strikes, Trump is now “willing to go on offense in ways others have not been” against transnational criminal organizations, he said, noting that Tren de Aragua members who were in the boat were “trying to poison our country with illicit drugs.”

Hegseth also said he watched the strike live and that it wasn’t a video generated by artificial intelligence (AI), apparently refuting a claim made by Venezuelan official Freddy Nanez, who had written on social media that it was a clip that was made through AI.

In his post on Sept. 2, Trump also warned that people who are seeking to smuggle drugs into the United States should “beware” and that the video of the strike should “serve as notice.”

The United States has deployed warships in the southern Caribbean in recent weeks, with the aim of following through on a pledge by Trump to crack down on drug cartels.

When asked about Venezuela’s close relationship with the Chinese regime, Hegseth criticized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“The only person that should be worried is Nicolás Maduro, who is ... effectively a kingpin of a drug narco-state,” Hegseth said in the interview on Sept. 3.

He also said Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

Last month, the United States doubled its reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro to $50 million, accusing him of links to drug trafficking and criminal groups.

Venezuelan officials have repeatedly claimed that Tren de Aragua is no longer active in their country after they dismantled it during a prison raid in 2023.

Reuters contributed to this report.