President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that U.S. forces will begin striking drug traffickers attempting to cross the southern border by land, expanding the administration’s campaign that has already destroyed cartel-linked vessels at sea.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump described the move as the next phase in a widening effort to choke off narcotics smuggling. The president said the maritime operations had been so effective that traffickers were now shifting routes. “There are very few boats traveling on the water, so now they’ll come in by land to a lesser extent,” he told Fox News. “And they will be hit on land also.”
Trump defended the military escalation as a life-saving measure. “Every one of those boats that gets knocked out is saving 25,000 American lives,” he said. “We have the greatest military in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And you see a little bit of it there, one shot, every one dead center. And the only way you can’t feel bad about it is you realize … that every time you see that happen, you’re saving 25,000 American lives.” He added, “Whenever I see that, I say to myself, I just saved 25,000 lives.”
The remarks followed confirmation from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that U.S. forces had carried out eight “kinetic strikes on narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean and Pacific, part of a series of military operations targeting cartel networks.
Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out yet another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO). Yet again, the now-deceased terrorists were engaged in narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific.
The… pic.twitter.com/PEaKmakivD
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) October 23, 2025
Pressed on whether those operations could legally extend onto U.S. soil, Trump insisted the administration was on solid ground. “Yes, we do,” he said. “We have legal authority. We’re allowed to do that.” He added that congressional leaders might be briefed “for transparency.” “If we do it by land, we may go back to Congress,” Trump said. “We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land. We don’t have to do that.”
The president framed the policy in stark national security terms. “We have legal authority. We’re allowed to do that, and if we do by land, we may go back to Congress, but we have, this is a national security problem,” the president said. “They killed 300,000 people last year. Drugs, these drugs coming in. They killed 300,000 Americans last year, and that gives you legal authority.”
The initiative marks the most aggressive expansion yet of Trump’s war on drug cartels, dovetailing with his declaration of an “armed conflict” against traffickers and a broader campaign of deportations and international pressure. Analysts say it signals a dramatic escalation in how the administration defines and targets narcotics operations abroad—and now, potentially, within the United States.
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