Trump’s Killing Spree Isn’t Stopping the Flow of Drugs Into the U.S.

The Pentagon claims that attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have severely curtailed the import of illegal drugs to the United States. And President Donald Trump says this has saved more than 1 million American lives. Experts call these assertions laughable and reporting by The Intercept shows that claims by the White House and War Department are baseless, phony, or both. “The administration has failed to explain the long-term objectives of this mission or provide any evidence of reduced drug flows into the United States,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said about the campaign on Thursday. “I would ask for a credible answer to this most fundamental question: What is the operation actually meant to accomplish?” Under Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. military has conducted attacks on 54 so-called drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing more than 185 civilians, since September. The latest strike, on April 26 in the Pacific, killed three people. The Trump administration claims its victims are members of at least one of 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name. Experts in the laws of war, as well as members of Congress from both parties, say the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. These summary killings are a deviation from the standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs, in which law enforcement agencies generally detained suspected drug smugglers and brought them to trial on criminal charges. “These are extrajudicial executions, or even just murders — something similar to a cop shooting a fleeing suspect in the back when there is no self-defense justification,” said Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. He called the growing death toll “a gross human rights violation.” While Trump consistently lies about various aspects of the boat strikes, including the illicit narcotics allegedly on the boats and the number of lives supposedly saved by the attacks, the Pentagon has followed suit, using rhetorical sleight of hand and seemingly disingenuous statistics to bolster the claims of their commander-in-chief. “I can’t imagine how you could come to some of these conclusions regarding illegal smuggling and drug overdose deaths based on the facts as we know them,” said retired Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, the former commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, who oversaw drug-interdiction operations in the Southeast U.S. and the Caribbean Basin. The Pentagon and White House for months failed to respond to detailed questions from The Intercept on the boat strike campaign. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the vessels attacked by the U.S. are trafficking fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. “The boats get hit and you see that fentanyl all over the ocean, it’s like floating in bags, it’s all over the place,” he said in October of boats leaving from Venezuela. Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and five other government officials briefed on boat strikes told The Intercept that top officials admitted in close-door briefings that the vessels are not transporting fentanyl. “They had some convoluted reason why it was still impacting fentanyl that was hard to follow and I did not buy,” said Jacobs, who serves the San Diego area. “Representing a border community, I know that 99 percent of the fentanyl that comes into the United States comes through legal ports of entry by U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.” Fentanyl is generally produced in the United States or Mexico, Baumgartner said. “I have not seen any evidence that fentanyl has ever been smuggled from South America to the United States,” he told The Intercept. “Cartels would not smuggle fentanyl down to South America just to smuggle it back by boat.” While bales of cocaine float in water, Baumgartner said, fentanyl is shipped in dramatically smaller quantities and would not be seen floating in the aftermath of an airstrike. Fentanyl or not, Trump has also touted astounding decreases in drug smuggling due to the boat strikes. “Drugs entering our country by sea are down 97 percent,” Trump said at a January 29 White House briefing. Experts said that Trump’s claim is ridiculous, invented, or involves disingenuous numbers meant to deceive the American people. “It wouldn’t be the first time this administration just made up something out of whole cloth,” said Sanho Tree, the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. Baumgartner noted that even the Pentagon figures put the lie to Trump’s claim. “He’s trying to imply that 97 percent of the cocaine that left South America by boat headed to the United States has been stopped,” he said. “That’s not true and is contradicted by the administration’s own statements.” Acting Assistant Secretary of War for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs Joseph Humire, for example, offered completely different numbers to Congress, telling the House Armed Services Committee in March that there “has been a 20 percent reduction of movements of drug vessels in the Caribbean and an additional 25 percent reduction in the Eastern Pacific.” The word “deterrence” has become a popular Pentagon euphemism for the use of lethal strikes, in contrast to previous U.S. government efforts to marshal economic, diplomatic, and military means to convince adversaries to change their ways. “Deterrence has a signaling effect on narco-terrorists, and raises the risks with their movements,” Humire claimed. But last month, for example, there were eight strikes in the span of 16 days, including five in five days. “That shows that traffickers, even along that high seas route, are not being deterred,” said Isacson. The amount of cocaine seized by U.S. authorities suggests the strikes have had little impact on the trade. “Really absurdly, there’s been no impact on flows of drugs toward the United States,” said Isacson. While data is limited, figures from Customs and Border Protection show that seizures at U.S. borders and along coasts have increased amid the Trump administration’s airstrikes in the Caribbean and Pacific. “CBP’s cocaine seizures have actually gone slightly up since the boat strikes began. Cocaine seized at all U.S. borders in the seven months before the strikes began was 38,000 pounds. In the seven months since, it’s 44,000 pounds — 6,000 pounds more,” Isacson explained. The Coast Guard recently announced “record-setting interdictions” of cocaine in the Eastern Pacific under Operation Pacific Viper, indicating that large quantities of the narcotic are still transiting through that maritime corridor. Since last August, that service has seized more than 215,000 pounds of cocaine as part of this operation, Coast Guard spokesperson Brandon Hillard told The Intercept. “Narco-terrorists continue to go to great lengths to traffic illicit narcotics within and out of the Western hemisphere,” he said, highlighting “the seizure of hundreds of tons of cocaine.” The general stability of the drug’s wholesale price also suggests it remains widely available. “The Coast Guard recently seized 1.2 tons of cocaine and reported a wholesale value of $19.3 million. This works out to be about a $16,500 per kilogram wholesale price. It doesn’t reflect the major jump in price that you would expect if you really had 97 percent reduction in flow,” Baumgartner explained of a seizure announced this month. “This report may be using old pricing information, but I would expect a significant spike in prices with even a 20 percent reduction in the cocaine flow.” According to the drug-testing company Millennium Health, use of stimulants, including c…