‘We Will Hunt You Down And Kill You’: Pete Hegseth Announces 43 Dead In Boat Strikes, Yet No One Has Seen Proof Of What Was Actually On Board

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the U.S. military hit another boat in the Caribbean Sea, saying it was carrying drugs. This is the third strike this week against boats the government says were moving drugs. The U.S. has now hit 10 boats since early September, and officials say 43 people have been killed so far.

Hegseth wrote on X that the boat was “known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics.” He said six men were on the boat during the nighttime strike and all of them were killed. Hegseth said the boat belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, which the Trump administration now calls a terrorist group. He said the strike happened in international waters and “no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”

On Thursday at a White House event, Hegseth gave a strong warning to people smuggling drugs. “We will find you, we will map your networks, we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,” he said, according to NBC News. He added that the government knows who these people are and which groups they work with. The strikes have happened in both the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean. There have been eight strikes in the Caribbean and two in the Pacific.

Questions Remain About What Was Actually On Board

Even though the government says these boats were carrying drugs, no proof has been shown to the public about what was really found on any of them. Lawmakers from both parties say the Trump administration has not told them enough about the strikes, according to six sources who talked to NBC News earlier this month. Members of Congress say they do not have enough details about the plan and information behind the attacks.

President Donald Trump has stood by the strikes, saying they save American lives. “Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives, so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough.’ It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people,” Trump said at a White House press talk last week. 

When asked if he would go to Congress for a war declaration to allow the strikes, Trump said no. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” he told reporters.

Trump explained why his team is not catching the people on the boats or taking the drugs they say are being moved. “But we’ve been capturing these boats for years, and they get back into the system, they do it again and again and again, and they don’t fear that, they have no fear,” Trump said. He later added, “We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.”

Fentanyl does cause tens of thousands of deaths in the United States each year. But experts and government reports say most of it comes over the U.S.-Mexico land border through legal entry points in small amounts that are hard to find. 

This comes from the bipartisan Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking. Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. Trump has said these cartels are behind thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year. Going after drug smuggling and cutting down deaths from fentanyl was a big promise Trump made during his campaign last year. Hegseth has been criticized for how he handles Pentagon communications as these strikes keep happening.