U.S. Military Strikes Kill 205 People in Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific, Rubio Defends Campaign

The U.S. military has continued lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio defending the campaign during a Senate hearing on June 2 by saying the Defense Department determined the strikes’ legality and based decisions on intelligence information.

Rubio told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that "Every strike has a legal officer on the deck" to decide whether the call is legal, and he said the process is done by the Department of War "in other theaters around the world."

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The PolitiFact report says the U.S. military struck another boat on May 30 in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men and increasing the total death toll to 205 people.

PolitiFact also says the U.S. has since struck at least 59 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and it notes that in October President Donald Trump declared the U.S. is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels and designated some as terrorist organizations.

In parallel, the PolitiFact fact-check says the Trump administration provided no evidence about the type or quantity of drugs on the boats, making it impossible to know the lethality of the drugs.

During the same Senate hearing where Rubio testified, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine and Republican Sen. Rand Paul said, based on classified briefings, that the U.S. military does not require a boat to have drugs or weapons on board to be targeted in a deadly strike.

Kaine said, "There’s evidence of narcotics on the boat—that is not a targeting criteria," and he said the presence of narcotics being absent from the criteria was "odd" given the administration’s public messaging.

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Rubio responded that "those are largely legal decisions," and he reiterated that "Every strike has a legal officer on the deck" to determine whether the call is legal or not.

The Foreign Policy report says the White House, Defense Department, and Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and it adds that the strikes have not been authorized by Congress.

Foreign Policy also frames the senators’ claims as potentially undermining the White House’s public rationale, while noting that the administration has not provided concrete evidence to back up its justifications for the strikes.

As the death toll grows, the Seattle Times reports that the U.S. military campaign has killed at least 202 people in more than 60 strikes, and it describes the strikes as shrouded in secrecy with few bodies recovered and scant physical evidence.

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The Seattle Times quotes an Ecuadorian woman from a fishing family in San Mateo saying, "We live in fear of these strikes," and it adds that "many people have stopped going out to fish."

The BBC reports that U.S. attacks on fast boats in the Caribbean are beginning to have a visible effect, but it says experts warn the business is not shrinking and is instead moving through other routes and methods that are harder to detect.

BBC Mundo quotes Adam Isacson, director of the defense oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America, saying, "That means that cocaine is reaching the United States regardless of those attacks," and it adds that the flow has not stopped.

Separately, Bloomberg reports that the Pentagon’s internal watchdog will investigate whether U.S. attacks in the Caribbean followed target-selection guidelines, including the joint targeting process for attacked ships in the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility as part of Operation South Launch.