United States will expand its military offensive against alleged drug trafficking organizations and does not rule out carrying out ground attacks in foreign territory, confirmed President Donald Trump this Wednesday during a press conference in Washington.
"Let's hit them hard. We have to do it to save lives. It's a national security issue," the president stated after meeting with the president of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at the White House, explaining that the drugs entering the country have caused the deaths of more than 300,000 Americans in the past year.
“These drugs are coming in and killing our people. If we don’t act now, we will lose hundreds of thousands more,” he justified.
Trump noted that he will notify Congress about the new military strikes and asserted that the United States has the legal authority to take action against the cartels beyond its borders.
"We have a national security crisis. We know who they are, where they come from, and what they transport. They no longer only come by sea, but also by land, and we will hit them there as well," he emphasized.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, supported the president's decision and stated that criminal groups “travel in international waters with hostility in mind, flooding the United States with deadly and dangerous drugs.”
“Last week we intercepted a submersible —a ‘dragon’, as they call them— used to transport tons of narcotics to our shores. We know who is behind it, where they come from, and what they are transporting,” explained Rubio, who confirmed that U.S. intelligence has been tracking the responsible organizations from their origin.
The official emphasized that drug consumption in the country has reached “alarming levels,” despite efforts in border control, and described the so-called ‘ocean drugs as a new challenge for hemispheric security.
Trump stated that the government is preparing a coordinated offensive to target "narcotics trafficking cells" in areas identified outside the United States.
"We need to destroy the lives of those people behind the drugs. This is the end of a cell. Something very serious is going to happen. What we did at sea, we will now do on land," he stated, without mentioning whether there are agreements with any countries for this.
In recent weeks, Washington has intensified its campaign of air and maritime strikes against vessels involved in drug trafficking in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, which have already resulted in several deaths and a dozen operations classified as kinetic by the Department of War.
This past Wednesday, a lethal attack on a vessel in the Pacific was reported, resulting in the deaths of at least two people.
The new phase announced by Trump would mark the first known ground incursion under the framework of the anti-drug national security doctrine that his administration has been promoting since September, keeping countries in the region, especially Colombia and Venezuela, on high alert.
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