Recent Changes in U.S. At-Sea Interdiction of Illicit Narcotics

Sometime back in the fall of 2025, I was contacted by a prominent national television, radio, and print news reporter with a surprising (but understandable under the circumstances) request for background information to inform her reporting. She was working on a story covering the numerous lethal military strikes on alleged drug trafficking speedboats (lanchas) in international waters and the waters of Central and South American countries that we all were seeing and hearing about in the news. The reporter’s core question for me? Paraphrasing: We see how the military is conducting these operations now; how did it work before?

It was and is an excellent question we all should be asking and the answers to which we as Americans all ought to know and remember, lest our society fall victim to the all-too-human phenomenon of “shifting baselines” — a dynamic akin to relative course plotting, in which we forget where we’ve been and how things once were done because we are only paying attention to what is happening in our immediate vicinity.

Not long after my conversation with the reporter, the federal government started seizing oil-laden tank ships departing Venezuela and, not long after that, attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran, predictably grinding commercial transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz to a halt. And so it was that the lancha strikes seemed to be eclipsed by far more concerning events. As far as I can tell, the lancha strikes story I was interviewed for never made it to air or print (although others in the media have since refocused some attention on the issue). Still, I believe it is important to at least speak to the issue of how these military strikes are being executed now (from what little the American public is told) compared with how U.S. at-sea law enforcement interdiction efforts were previously conducted.

In breaking this information down, I think the most easily digestible way to present it is with the familiar “Five W’s”: “Who, What, Where, When, and Why?”

Who Conducts the Interdiction Operations?

Historically, at-sea interdiction of illicit drugs has been a federal law enforcement mission conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard, and this is so for at least two important reasons. The first and most important reason is that the Coast Guard stands alone among the U.S. military services as both a branch of our military and a civilian law enforcement agency. Congress intentionally created it that way by statute (see 14 U.S.C. §§ 101 & 102). The other five services (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force) are subject to the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385), under which they are expressly barred from civilian law enforcement activities. The second reason is that the at-sea interdiction mission—whether it be directed at illicit drugs or any other items smuggled into the United States—is at the core of the Coast Guard’s DNA. This goes back to its predecessor agency the Revenue Marine, which was conceived by our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and created by the 1st Congress of the United States on August 4, 1790, as a fleet of ten armed cutters that collected tariffs and deterred smuggling along the Atlantic Coast.

Recently, beginning on September 1, 2025, the first of as many as 78 (reported numbers range from the 60s to the 70s) separate U.S. lancha strikes was reported in the news, with the most recent strike as of this writing reported to have occurred on September 19, 2026. Media reports are that the Trump administration is conducting these operations through the Department of Defense (DOD) military services, almost entirely with the use of aerial firepower. The deployment of military assets to strike these privately owned foreign boats is predicated on claims by the Trump Administration that the United States is in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, and that the lanchas are carrying illicit cartel drugs bound for the United States. On this basis, the government appears to be justifying its actions as a lawful use of military force. However, a recent United Nations Human Rights Council report, released September 21, 2026, concludes the U.S. military strikes on lanchas are breaches of international law and could constitute crimes against humanity.

What Are We Interdicting?

Historically, we have always had a very good idea what kinds of contraband the Coast Guard is interdicting because they don’t just tell us, they show us. As a kid growing up on the Gulf Coast in the 1970s and 1980s, the image is burned into my mind of the Coast Guard captain and crew, just back from an enforcement operation, posing at the dock with bails upon bails of illicit narcotics confiscated at sea. It was in the local papers and on the nightly news shows every time you turned around. Those confiscated narcotics are critically important, because they are the key evidence that enables prosecutors to lock the drug smugglers away in prison for a long time.

With the current lancha strikes, there typically is no evidence of what was onboard because in virtually every instance the entire boat, all its cargo, and most or all of its crew or passengers are blown to pieces in the water. We are told by DOD officials that there were illicit narcotics onboard, but little if any real evidence is offered to the public. We are expected to take the government at its word.

Where/When Are We Conducting Drug Interdiction Operations?

Again, owing to the traditional conception of narcotics interdiction viewed through a law enforcement lens, the Coast Guard typically (though not always) waits until a given drug smuggling vessel is in U.S. waters, because when it is in our waters, and particularly in our territorial sea or contiguous zone, not only are the Coast Guard’s law enforcement authorities at their zenith, but the vessel’s presence there is grounds for a reasonable suspicion that it is bound for the United States with whatever it has onboard. This is not to say that suspicion of a crime is necessary for an at-sea boarding—since 1790 the Coast Guard and its predecessors the Revenue Marine and Revenue Cutter Service have had the lawful authority to conduct suspicionless vessel boardings at-sea (see 14 U.S.C. § 522(a) and 19 U.S.C. § 1581(a)), and the courts have consistently upheld it as non-violative of our 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The DOD lancha strikes since early September, 2025, have occurred largely in international waters of the Pacific and the Caribbean and, in a few instances, in the waters of other countries. Other than unsubstantiated claims by DOD officials that the boats are bound for the United States, there typically is no indication where they actually are headed. As a general matter, blowing up vessels transiting on the high seas raises serious concerns about violations by the United States of well-settled customary international law. The high seas are open to all countries and all vessels of those countries, which have a fundamental freedom of navigation under customary international law.

Why Shift Emphasis from Coast Guard At-Sea Enforcement to Military Strikes on Lanchas?

Setting aside the apparent obsession with military lethality by some in the current administration and the penchant of others for inhumane cruelty (seemingly as some sort of deterrent), the only rational explanation for the change in approach to at-sea interdiction is that the new approach is more effective in stemming the tide of dangerous, illegal drugs coursing into the United States. Unfortunately, indications are that is not the case. According to a July 28, 2026, front page news story in the Washington Post, mid-year Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Pentagon reviews have concluded that the deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the United States. DEA analysts reportedly found that the lancha strikes have failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and have led traffickers to diversify from lanchas in international waters—using different routes running in other countries waters and different means of transportation entirely, such as aircraft. Meanwhile the Pentagon reportedly has concluded that the lancha strikes have had no impact on the purity of illicit narcotics coming into our country.

So all indications are we are not accomplishing the presumed goal of this new approach. In the meantime, on September 24, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the Coast Guard has exceeded 260,000 lbs. of cocaine seized in the Pacific since the start of its Operation Pacific Viper in August, 2025—an operation that appears to be employing all the traditional law enforcement tools described above. I think we are at a point with the DOD lancha strikes where we should be seriously asking ourselves whether the means justify the ends. Regardless, let us please not forget the way we traditionally have tackled this societal problem of illicit drugs and why—our commitment to the rule of law and equal justice under the law, and the reality that the world watches how the United States tackles difficult problems like this. We should be leading by example.