Colombia’s President Says Trump Opening New ‘War Scenario’ in Caribbean With Alleged Strike on Colombian Boat
The White House says the Colombian president’s claim is ‘baseless and reprehensible.’
Colombia’s left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, is accusing the American military of destroying a Colombian boat and killing citizens of his country during a recent strike in the Caribbean Sea.
The claim comes as the United States has carried out at least four strikes on boats in the Caribbean, killing at least 21 people. The Trump administration says it is targeting “narco-traffickers” in an attempt to stop the flow of fentanyl. However, the strikes have led to rebukes from Democrats and some Republicans who insist they are not legal.
Mr. Petro shared a post from Senator Adam Schiff about the California senator’s resolution to block the Trump administration from carrying out further strikes in the Caribbean. Mr. Schiff called the strikes “illegal” and said they “risk dragging America into another war.”
The Colombian president wrote, “Senator Adam Schiff is correct. Now I find myself in a meeting with the European governments and I will say the same thing. A new war scenario has opened up: the Caribbean.”
He said “indications show” that a recent strike targeted a Colombian boat “with Colombian citizens inside it.”
“I hope their families come forward and report it,” Mr. Petro said. “There is no war against smuggling; there is a war for oil and it must be stopped by the world. The aggression is against all of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
An ABC News reporter, Anne Flaherty, posted on X that a “person familiar” with the situation told her that “at least one of the boats hit by the military in the Caribbean Sea killed people from Colombia.”
The White House has denied the claim, saying in a statement that it “looks forward to President Petro publicly retracting his baseless and reprehensible statement.”
Last week, President Trump said America is in an “armed conflict” with South American drug cartels, which the federal government labeled terrorist organizations, and said that the drug smugglers are “unlawful combatants.” The notice appeared to be an effort to provide a legal justification for carrying out the strikes. Under international law, in an armed conflict countries can kill combatants or detain them without trial.
The strikes have mostly focused on boats leaving Venezuela, which the Trump administration accuses of being responsible for the flow of fentanyl into America. However, analysts have said that most of the fentanyl production occurs in Mexico and China.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill argue that the president does not have the authority to carry out the strikes without Congress’s approval.
On Wednesday, the Senate rejected Mr. Schiff’s War Powers Act resolution in a 48-51 vote. Two Republican senators, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voted for the resolution. Senator John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote against it.
Secretary Marco Rubio claimed that the Democrats’ resolution would not only block military action in the Caribbean but would also stop strikes on the Houthis and Iranian proxy forces.
Ahead of the vote, Mr. Schiff said, “We are here today to ask our colleagues to join us in this nonpartisan vote, in this affirmation of Congress’s authority to declare war or to refuse to declare it, to authorize force, or to refuse to authorize it.”
He added that the resolution “does not affect the United States’s ability to target terrorist groups covered by Congress’s existing authorizations to use military force.”
A member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Tom Cotton, said that the strikes are “lawfully sound” and “extremely limited.”
“President Trump stated very clearly and repeatedly during the campaign that he would attack these cartels if necessary. This is simply him keeping his word to the American people,” Mr. Cotton said. “Because they’ve been going on for less than 60 days. They don’t even fall within the War Powers Resolution threshold.”
Beside the questions about whether the White House has the authority to carry out the strikes, lawmakers have also raised concerns about the boats that have been targeted and whether they were actually carrying drugs. After the military carried out a strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat leaving Venezuela, it was reported that the craft was trying to turn back before it was struck.
Meanwhile, Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, told a journalist, Matt Laslo, that the Trump administration has not produced evidence that the boats were carrying drugs. He said that the gang Tren de Aragua “does human trafficking.”
“When you bomb, you often don’t recover narcotics. In at least one instance, there’s no narcotics recovered. It’s not clear that was what was on the boat. It might have been human traffic[kers],” Mr. Kaine said.
