The Navy is holding two survivors of a U.S. attack on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean, according to two government officials.
The two survivors were on board a boat that the U.S. military attacked on Thursday, according to the two officials who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity. They are being held on a warship and are believed to be the first prisoners of the Trump administration’s undeclared war against undisclosed “narcoterrorist” groups.
Prior to Thursday’s strike, the Trump administration had disclosed five attacks that had killed at least 27 people in the Caribbean. Each strike had been accompanied with a short aerial video posted to social media showing an explosion and the vessel bursting into flames.
Thursday’s strike reportedly killed two or more people, the officials said.
The people are believed to be the first two prisoners of the Trump administration’s undeclared war against “narcoterrorist” groups.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson did not respond to questions about the Thursday attack and under what authorities the prisoners are being held.
“Given that there is no armed conflict, there is no basis to hold these survivors as law of war detainees,” Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war, told The Intercept. “The Trump administration is already using a make-believe armed conflict to kill people. Will it also use this make-believe armed conflict to detain people as well?”
During the first attack on September 2, civilians aboard the boat survived an initial strike, two American officials familiar with the matter told The Intercept at the time. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack. It is unclear whether the persons were injured in the initial strike.
The attacks on boats are part of a war being waged by the Trump administration without the consent of Congress, according to a confidential notice that was sent to several congressional committees earlier this month.
President Donald Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a declared state of “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations” or DTOs, according to the notice. It describes three people killed by U.S. commandos on a boat in the Caribbean last month as “unlawful combatants,” as if they were soldiers on a battlefield. This is a significant departure from standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs, in which law enforcement arrest suspected drug dealers as opposed to summarily executing them.
Legal experts — including former government lawyers who specialized in determinations regarding the laws of war and extrajudicial killings — say the strikes are patently illegal and amount to murder.
Trump also confirmed on Wednesday that he secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and threatened future attacks on Venezuelan territory.
“Given that there is no armed conflict, there is no basis to hold these survivors as law of war detainees.”
“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president told reporters hours after the New York Times first reported the secret CIA authorization. The unprecedented admission of ongoing CIA covert action by a U.S. president is part of a campaign against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.
The Trump administration describes the victims of its boat attacks as Venezuelan narco-terrorists, but Colombian nationals were aboard at least one of the boats sunk by the United States, according to two government officials who spoke with The Intercept. Reports have also emerged that two Trinidadians were killed in a Tuesday attack.
The two officials did not disclose the nationalities of the survivors of the Thursday attack.
“We attacked a submarine,” said Trump on Friday, confirming the Thursday strike. “That was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs.”
“Just so you understand,” he continued. “This was not an innocent group of people. I don’t know too many people that have submarines.”
Update: October 17, 2025, 2:28 p.m. ET
The article has been updated to include comments Donald Trump made confirming the Thursday boat strike.
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