U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (not pictured) over lunch within the Cupboard Room on the White Home in Washington, D.C., U.S., Oct. 17, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The 2 survivors of an American navy strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel within the Caribbean can be despatched to Ecuador and Colombia, their house nations, President Donald Trump stated Saturday.
The navy rescued the pair after putting a submersible vessel Thursday, in what was at the very least the sixth such assault since early September.
“It was my nice honor to destroy a really giant DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating in direction of america on a well-known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump stated in a social media put up. “U.S. Intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with principally Fentanyl, and different unlawful narcotics.”
The Republican president stated two folks on board had been killed — another than was beforehand reported — and the 2 who survived are being despatched to their house nations “for detention and prosecution.”
The repatriation avoids questions for the Trump administration about what the authorized standing of the 2 would have been within the U.S. justice system.
With Trump’s affirmation on his Reality Social platform of the demise toll, meaning U.S. navy motion in opposition to vessels within the area have killed at the very least 29 folks.
The president has justified the strikes by asserting that america is engaged in an “armed battle” with drug cartels. He’s counting on the identical authorized authority utilized by the George W. Bush administration when it declared a battle on terrorism after the Sept. 11 assaults and is treating the suspected traffickers as in the event that they had been enemy troopers in a conventional battle.
