WASHINGTON 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday warned drug-smuggling networks that attempt to bring narcotics into the US will face lethal consequences as US strikes on suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific continue.

"Right now, the world is seeing the strength of American resolve and stemming the flow of lethal drugs to our country. Here again, we've been focused and here we've been clear," Hegseth said in a speech at the 2025 Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California.

"If you're working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it,” he added, defending the strikes amid growing bipartisan questions of the legality of the policy.

The US is prioritizing its fight against cartels throughout the Western Hemisphere, said Hegseth.

"The days in which these narco-terrorists, designated terror organizations, operate freely in our hemisphere, are over. These narco-terrorists are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaeda. We are tracking them, we are killing them, and we will keep killing them so long as they are poisoning our people with narcotics," he said.

- Foreign ties

The Pentagon said Tuesday that to date, there have been a total of 21 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Western Hemisphere with 82 "narco-terrorists" killed.

Hegseth stressed that the campaign is not an isolated US effort, as governments across the hemisphere increasingly view cartel networks as shared adversaries.

"We're not doing this on our own. Throughout our hemisphere, our allies and partners recognize that these narco-terrorists threaten them as well. So we're working together, sometimes overtly, sometimes not, and we'll keep doing so for ... a more stable hemisphere for all of us. But make no mistake .... In our hemisphere, there is no safe haven for narco-terrorists," he added.

Citing anonymous sources, CNN reported last month that the UK is no longer sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean as it does not want to be complicit in the US strikes, which it sees as illegal. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed the report as “fake news”

Legal experts have questioned the legality of the strikes, citing a lack of proof from the Defense Department that the boats were actually carrying drugs, as well as the summary execution of the people aboard, who are not given any opportunity to prove their innocence.

The same week as a closed-door congressional session on a Sept. 2 follow-up strike on a suspected Venezuelan drug boat, killing survivors of the first attack, Democrats and Republicans alike voiced concern and criticism of the strike.

While most in his party have voiced approval of the strikes, Republican Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia told MS Now that a “two-blow” operation made him “uncomfortable” and that if the Pentagon did order a strike to kill survivors, it would be “unacceptable.”

While the administration maintains that the strike was lawful and necessary, members of Congress and legal experts have raised doubts, with some Democrats warning that targeting survivors could amount to a war crime.