Defending America from Cartels

White House touts record drop in cartel-inflicted U.S. casualties as military boat strikes pass 200 killed

Senior administration officials say President Trump's lethal military campaign against drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific has produced the steepest decline in cartel-caused American casualties ever recorded, a claim built on 68 strikes that have killed 227 suspected narco-terrorists.

On a press call Tuesday, unnamed White House officials laid out the numbers behind what they described as the first time a president has directed sustained military force specifically to defend the homeland from cartel networks.

The Department of War executed the strategy, officials said, and U.S. Southern Command carried out the strikes, including a recent hit on a go-fast boat along a known Caribbean trafficking route that killed four suspected smugglers. SOUTHCOM released video of that strike.

The campaign has drawn scrutiny, but the administration is not hedging. Officials framed the results in blunt terms: a 65 percent reduction in illicit maritime activity in the Western Caribbean, a 60 percent drop in the Eastern Caribbean, and a nearly 50 percent decrease across key regions of the Eastern Pacific.

Those figures, if accurate, represent a dramatic shift in the operating environment for seaborne drug networks that have funneled narcotics toward American shores for decades.

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