In September 2025, the U.S. military began striking boats in the Caribbean Sea—not pirate vessels or military craft, but ordinary fishing boats that, according to intelligence, were carrying cocaine. President Trump personally posted on Truth Social that the maritime flow of drugs had been stopped by 98.2%. SOUTHCOM reported victories.
Yet the plan lasted only until an internal DEA assessment that, in the summer of 2026, buried the key metric. The Washington Post published an investigation based on a classified agency evaluation—one never intended for public release. The volume of cocaine on the American market had not changed appreciably. A DEA officer put it cynically, in the spirit of the classic “balloon effect”: when you squeeze from one side, the pressure bursts out somewhere else—often where you least expect it: in the air or right at the water’s edge.
The cartels adapted quickly. Boats proved too vulnerable, so they switched to aircraft that drop the cargo at sea, where other vessels pick it up in international waters. Large shipments now move along the coastline, where the military almost never fires for fear of hitting civilians. The Caribbean campaign simply redirected the tonnage into Pacific corridors, where the route to California is two days shorter and the risk of interception is lower.
On the ground the effect is visible to the naked eye. In Florida the price of cocaine is falling. The economics are simple: if supplies had been cut off, the price would have risen; instead it is doing the opposite. That means the product is available, and in sufficient quantity. In December the Coast Guard seized more than 3,700 pounds from a single boat—a thirty-year record for that small station. And CBP statistics for the ten months of the operation paint a picture that directly contradicts the central promise: seizures have not decreased; they have actually increased.
According to a report by the Department of Defense Inspector General, the operation had cost taxpayers more than $647 million by the spring of 2026. Later estimates rose to roughly $820 million. 221 people were killed. The last confirmed strike took place on 21 June. After that, activity declined markedly. In early August Joint Task Force Southern Spear was placed in transition mode; it was replaced by Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere. Press releases called this “optimization” and “evolution”; in reality the intensity of hard strikes was reduced and the operation was shifted into a quieter, standing posture. Not a word was said about the 221 bodies.
The legal front has not lagged behind. The families of two men killed off the Venezuelan coast have already filed a lawsuit, insisting their relatives were ordinary fishermen. The White House, however, replies that they were “unlawful combatants.” This raises the key question: can a drug cartel be considered an armed force waging a protracted war against the United States? Under international law, almost certainly not. Meanwhile the ACLU is seeking the release of the memorandum on which the administration relied to justify the strikes. Hearings continue, but the document itself remains under lock and key.
Insight Crime has traced step by step how the campaign gathered momentum: from the Caribbean it spilled into the Pacific, from ordinary fishing boats onto semi-submersibles. Yet the military rarely presents evidence that cocaine was actually on board. In several cases the crew simply disappeared—no survivors were found, and searches were called off.
The White House dismissed the Washington Post investigation as “ridiculous.” The Pentagon sticks to its line: the operation is doing exactly what it was designed to do—detect, disrupt, and dismantle networks. But the general who ran the operation told Congress out loud what many were thinking: strikes on boats, in his words, are “probably not the most effective tool” in the fight against drug trafficking.
And demand in the United States has gone nowhere. Cartels are a network, not a hierarchy. You close one channel and another is working within a week. You hit the sea and they go to the air. You hit the air and they crawl overland through Mexico. The military simply has no levers to affect demand. All it has is permission to shoot.
The conclusion writes itself: hundreds of millions of dollars, 221 corpses, the price of cocaine in Florida lower than before it began. The cartels adapted, the routes went around, and the operation was quietly wound down. Trump promised 98 percent—in reality it was zero.
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