Democrats slam Trump admin’s drug boat strikes as admin vows protecting US

Democratic lawmakers are increasingly intensifying their pressure on the Trump administration due to its series of military strikes on suspects medicineTrafficking boats in the Caribbean since September, with a recent focus on alleged drug traffickers who survived the initial strike and were killed in the follow-up.

“If the reports are correct, [Secretary of War] “Pete Hegseth likely committed a war crime when he issued an illegal order that led to the deaths of helpless survivors of the US strike in the Caribbean,” Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen said in a statement earlier in December about the strikes that killed suspected smugglers.

The White House told Fox News Digital on Friday that Democrats’ criticism reflects the “Maryland Man” hoax, referring to the arrest of Kelmar Abrego Garcia, an accused MS-13 gang member who was residing illegally in Maryland.

Abrego Garcia received significant support from Democratic lawmakers in March over his deportation to El Salvador, with lawmakers traveling to El Salvador to interview him, and media outlets describing him as a “Maryland guy.”

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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth greets President Donald Trump before speaking to a gathering of senior U.S. military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Quantico, Virginia. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“Innocent poacher is the new ‘Maryland Man’ hoax – just as the media tried to paint MS-13 human trafficker Kelmar Abrego Garcia as ‘Father of the Year,’ they are now providing cover for foreign terrorists smuggling deadly drugs with the goal of killing Americans. President Trump is using every element of American power to confront the cartels and prevent deadly drugs from flooding our country – just as he promised during his campaign,” White House spokeswoman Ana said. Kelly told Fox Digital.

Trump has long pledged to combat the ongoing opioid epidemic and stop the flow of foreign drugs and precursor chemicals into the United States. The administration has defended at least 22 raids, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of suspected drug criminals, on suspected drug boats as protecting the United States from gangs seeking to “poison Americans.”

Kelmar Abrego Garcia (right) and his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sora (left) attend a prayer vigil before entering the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office on August 25, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“These drug terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home, and they will not succeed,” Hegseth wrote in a letter. Published on X in November. “The Department will treat them just as we treated Al Qaeda. We will continue to track them, map them, hunt them down, and kill them.”

Democrats have increasingly objected to a pair of strikes on September 2 against an alleged drug boat from Venezuela. The White House confirmed army It carried out an initial strike on the boat before launching a second strike that killed two suspected traffickers, leading Democrats to claim that the administration had committed possible war crimes.

“You have two people in obvious distress, with no way to move, with a destroyed ship, killed by the United States,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters earlier in December of the strikes.

While Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona responded, saying: “It is clearly illegal to pursue survivors in the water.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Kelly’s and Himes’ offices for comment on the White House statement and the opioid epidemic in the U.S., but did not immediately receive responses.

Rosen’s office told Fox News Digital on Friday in response: “If Donald Trump was serious about fighting drug trafficking, why did he pardon the former president of Honduras who was convicted of smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States? And why did the Trump administration threaten to cut millions of dollars in funding to address the opioid epidemic? The American people deserve to know.”

Republicans like Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that the survivors’ video allegedly showed individuals wanting to “stay in the fight.”

“I saw two survivors trying to overturn a boat loaded with drugs that was heading to the United States so they could stay in the fight,” Cotton said.

Capt. Morgan Murphy, the Republican Senate candidate for Alabama, told Fox News Digital he sees “absolute hypocrisy from a bunch of stage kids who don’t care about the lives lost to the drug trade” when asked about Democrats’ votes on strikes.

“For nearly a decade, Democrats have hailed President Obama as the ‘Prince of Peace,’ even though his bombings of Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia killed hundreds of civilians. None of these countries were at war with the United States or targeted American civilians,” Murphy said, referring to how former President Barack Obama faced war crimes charges from critics over his administration’s drone strikes and civilian casualties in countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan.

Murphy previously served as chief of public diplomacy for the president’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine in the Trump administration before launching his Senate campaign earlier in the fall. A captain in the U.S. Navy Reserves, he is also a veteran of the Afghanistan War, where he received the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and the Afghan Campaign Medal, among others.

He added: “But when President Trump makes efforts to stop human smugglers and drug traffickers who have caused untold damage and killed millions of Americans, they want to put the president and the Secretary of War on trial.”

President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he had ordered a lethal strike on a ship linked to a designated terrorist organization operating in the US Southern Command area of ​​responsibility on September 19. (@realDonaldTrump via Truth Social)

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The Trump administration launched the strikes after the president campaigned to stop the flow of drugs into the United States from countries including China, Mexico and Central and South America. The Trump administration has turned its attention to Venezuela, led by dictatorial President Nicolas Maduro, saying the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after the groups evolved into transnational terrorist organizations.

The administration has defended the strikes as necessary to stem the flow of opioid deaths in the United States, while experts have also said the pressure campaign on Venezuela is likely aimed at ousting Maduro as leader of the oil-rich country.

Hegseth did not issue a “kill ’em all” order during the Venezuela strikes, the admiral told Congress

Center for Disease Control It found that an estimated 806,000 people died from an opioid overdose between 1999-2023. The opioid crisis is seen as unfolding in three waves, starting in the 1990s with increased prescriptions for opioids, the CDC reports, followed by a second wave that began in 2010, when Heroin overdoses have risenAnd finally, the current third wave of deaths caused by synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl.

The crisis has slowed from a high of 81,806 opioid-related deaths in 2022, with 2023 marking the first annual decline in deaths since 2018, according to CDC data. There were an estimated 79,358 deaths due to opioids in 2023, according to CDC data.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that has increased in popularity and contributed to the high rate of opioid deaths in the United States in recent years. (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

As of Thursday, an estimated 86 suspected drug traffickers had been killed in the attacks.

Fentanyl has long been on the medical market to treat individuals with severe pain, but has since become a substance manufactured illegally by transnational criminal organizations, such as cartels.

Trump pledged in his 2022 announcement that he would run for re-election to the White House, and that the cartels would face the wrath of the United States over overdose deaths when he returned to the Oval Office.

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“We will wage war on the cartels and prevent fentanyl and deadly drugs from killing 200,000 Americans a year,” he said in November 2024, previewing his administration.

Several Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee told Fox News Digital that the Trump administration was well within its rights to act against the Maduro regime. They added that they were eager to obtain more information after several strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug boats and Trump’s increasing rhetoric targeting Maduro.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is facing increasing pressure from the United States under the Trump administration (Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

“These boats are stacked with bags of white powder, mostly fentanyl and other drugs as well,” Trump said in September. “Each boat kills 25,000.”

Democrats in recent decades have promoted fiery rhetoric focused on eliminating foreign drug terrorists, including then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden He called for “another D-Day” to end the war on drugs in a 1989 speech in which he criticized the administration of Republican President George H.W. Bush for not taking strong enough action on the cocaine epidemic.

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“Let’s go after the drug lords where they live with an international strike force,” Biden said in a 1989 speech. “There must be no safe haven for these drug terrorists and they must know it.”

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.