The United States this week struck a boat in the Caribbean that President Donald Trump claimed belonged to Tren de Aragua, a notorious organised crime gang. Washington alleged the boat was smuggling drugs to the US.

The Trump administration has long claimed that cocaine shipments from Venezuela are prompting a drug overdose problem that plagues the US.

Here is what is happening between the US and Venezuela, and what facts on the ground tell us:

What action is the US taking against Venezuelan drug cartels?

The US attack on the Venezuelan boat on Tuesday came just a few days after news reports circulated about US warships advancing into Venezuelan waters.

Last month, The New York Times reported that Trump had signed a secret directive instructing the Pentagon to use military force against certain Latin American drug cartels designated by the US as foreign terrorist organisations.

Earlier in August, multiple news agencies reported that three US Aegis-class guided missile destroyer ships had headed to the Caribbean alongside other warships to counter narcotics trafficking.

The Reuters news agency, quoting two anonymous individuals who had been briefed on the deployment, reported that USS San Antonio, USS Iwo Jima, and USS Fort Lauderdale were headed towards the Venezuelan coast, carrying 4,500 US service members, including 2,200 Marines.

The US Fleet Forces Command published a news release on August 14, saying sailors and Marines assigned to the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group had departed from Norfolk, Virginia and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The release did not explicitly state details of the mission or specify where the group is being deployed.

What happened in the US attack, and was it legal?

In his Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump said 11 people, whom he deemed “terrorists”, had been killed in the strike. “Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America,” Trump wrote.

The US did not provide further details on those killed.

Experts have cast doubt on the legality of the US attack on a foreign boat in international waters.

Salvador Santino Regilme, an associate professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera that lethal force in maritime interdiction must comply with the right to life and to law enforcement necessity-and-proportionality standards.

“UNCLOS and the 1988 UN Drug Trafficking Convention emphasise cooperation, boarding and consent mechanisms at sea, not summary destruction. Any strike that kills suspected traffickers should trigger a prompt, independent, and transparent investigation,” Regilme said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The strike probably also flouted the US Constitution, constitutional law expert Bruce Fein told Al Jazeera.

“Any use of the military [except] in self-defence to an actual attack requires express congressional statutory authorisation. The military attack on the alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers was unconstitutional,” Fein said.

The War Powers Resolution is a federal law that stipulates the US president may not engage in war without the approval of Congress. Under the law, the president must inform Congress within 48 hours of taking military action.

However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the press after a meeting with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday that strikes on drug-carrying boats like the one on Tuesday would continue. He added that the US has tried to intercept such boats, but that approach has not deterred them. “What will stop them is when you blow them up,” Rubio said.

How has Venezuela responded?

In response to the US deployment of warships, President Nicolas Maduro urged his supporters to join militias to protect the country, saying, “No empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela.”

One such armed group is the Bolivarian Militia, which is named after Simon Bolivar, who was a Caracas-born independence leader who liberated the modern-day Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia from the Spanish Empire.

On Thursday, the Pentagon released a statement claiming that two Venezuelan military planes had flown near US ships in international waters, describing the act as a provocation and warning against a repeat.

What does the US accuse Venezuela of?

The Trump administration claims Venezuela’s left-wing president is directly working with drug cartels and is involved in cocaine trafficking. It has accused Tren de Aragua of serving as a “front” for the Maduro government. Trump designated Tren de Aragua as a “foreign terrorist organisation” on his first day in the Oval Office on January 20.

In 2020, during Trump’s first term, Maduro was indicted by a US federal court on drug charges, including narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.

On August 7, the US Department of Justice and the State Department doubled a reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50m, accusing him of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.

“Officially, Washington frames the action as a counter-narcotics strike against Tren de Aragua and other ‘narco-terrorist’ networks,” Regilme said.

“The move also extends a years-long coercive strategy towards the Maduro government that dates to US narcoterrorism charges in 2020, and it serves a domestic messaging goal – linking a hard-edged foreign policy to drug control at home.”

Maduro returned to power after last year’s disputed election, which resulted in widespread accusations of fraud from within and outside Venezuela. In July 2024, independent observer, the Carter Center released a statement saying it could not verify the election results declared by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE). The statement added the election “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic”. A panel of United Nations experts also echoed this. Nine Latin American countries demanded a review of the election results in the presence of independent observers.

The US has not had a formal diplomatic relationship with Venezuela since 2019 and does not recognise Maduro’s presidency as legitimate.

The US has accused Maduro and his minister of interior, justice and peace, Diosdado Cabello, of collaborating with the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), which Washington has also designated as a “terrorist” group. Like Maduro, Cabello is a member of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

In March, Trump invoked the 1798 wartime Alien Enemies Act, allowing him to detain and deport people from a “hostile nation or government”. On the same day, the Trump administration deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security El Salvador prison, the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT).

On Tuesday, a US federal appeals court ruled that Trump could not use the 1798 Act to deport suspected gang members.

Are the Trump administration’s allegations against Venezuela true?

The Trump administration has not provided any evidence linking Maduro to Tren de Aragua or any other drug cartel, and the Venezuelan leader has denied the allegations.

The US intelligence community has also contradicted the Trump administration’s claims that there are links between the Venezuelan government and Tren de Aragua.

A classified assessment by the National Intelligence Council released in April repeatedly stated that there was no evidence of coordination between Tren de Aragua and any senior leaders in the Maduro administration, although it did state that the permissive environment in Venezuela allowed drug gangs to flourish.

The report drew input from all 18 agencies that comprise the US intelligence community. All agencies, except the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), agreed with the findings.

How much cocaine comes from Venezuela?

According to the World Drug Report, published by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) this year, the global production of cocaine reached a record high in 2023, exceeding an estimated 3,708 tonnes – an increase of nearly one-third compared with the previous year.

The UNODC report shows that a majority of the coca bush, from which cocaine is derived, was cultivated in Colombia, followed by Peru and Bolivia. The report also shows that most of the main routes of cocaine trafficking in 2023 and 2024 into the US passed through Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, rather than Venezuela.

Venezuela is used as a “transit corridor” for some Colombian cocaine moving into the eastern Caribbean, Regilme said. “But the dominant maritime pathway for US-bound cocaine remains the Eastern Pacific into Mexico and Central America, where the largest interdictions occur. Recent seizures underscore that pattern.”

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released an annual cocaine report in 2024, which identified Colombia as the primary source of cocaine seized by the US. About 84 percent of the cocaine seized in the US was found to be originating from Colombian coca. The report does not mention Venezuela.

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Venezuelan F-16s buzz US warship in Caribbean

USS Jason Dunham.

Venezuelan fighter jets buzzed a US Navy destroyer on Thursday in what the Pentagon called a “highly provocative move”.

The incident, which Washington said occurred in international waters, saw two F-16 warplanes fly over the USS Jason Dunham, one of seven US warships deployed to the Caribbean as part of American efforts to crack down on drug trafficking.

In a terse statement that confirmed only the broad outlines of the incident, the Pentagon equated Nicolas Maduro’s government to a narco-trafficking cartel.

“Today, two Maduro regime military aircraft flew near a US Navy vessel in international waters,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

“The cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the US military.”

Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters news agency.

President Donald Trump has accused his Venezuelan counterpart of running Tren de Aragua, a criminal organisation that Washington designated a terrorist organisation earlier this year. Caracas denies the allegations.

The US has also offered a $50 million (£37.1m) reward for Maduro’s arrest.

A US official, speaking to Reuters anonymously, said the Venezuelan military aircraft were F-16s and that they flew over the USS Jason Dunham.

The Dunham has been deployed to the Caribbean, carrying more than 4,500 sailors and Marines, in a military buildup that has drawn concern from Caracas.

US Marines and sailors from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit have also been carrying out amphibious training and flight operations in southern Puerto Rico.

‘An immediate threat to the US’

On Friday, the US also ordered the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to a Puerto Rico airfield to conduct operations against drug cartels, two sources told Reuters, adding to the already bristling US military presence in the southern Caribbean.

Thursday’s incident further raises tensions just two days after a US strike killed 11 people aboard a vessel from Venezuela that Mr Trump said was carrying illegal narcotics.

Credit: Reuters/Donald Trump via Truth Social

Legal experts have raised questions about the attack, despite the Trump administration’s arguments that it has the authority to strike alleged members of Tren de Aragua.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said during a trip to Latin America that Mr Trump personally ordered the strike. He also defended the new aggressive approach in a joint press conference with Gabriela Sommerfeld, the foreign minister of Ecuador in Quito on Thursday.

“Now, they’re going to help us find these people and blow them up if that’s what it takes,” Mr Rubio said.

In remarks made in Mexico on Wednesday, Mr Rubio said: “These cartels know they’re going to lose two per cent of their cargo ... What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”

In Mexico, Mr Rubio emphasised that Trump has designated Venezuelan groups like the Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles as “narco-terrorist organisations.”

“These are not stockbrokers. These are not real estate agents who on the side deal a few drugs,” Rubio said.

“If you’re on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl headed to the United States, you’re an immediate threat to the United States.”

Caracas accused Washington of committing extrajudicial killings in the attack, saying “they murdered 11 people without due process.”

The attack marks a dramatic escalation by the United States, which has for decades relied on routine policing operations rather than deadly force to seize drugs.

Maduro has responded by mobilising Venezuela’s military which numbers around 340,000, and reservists, which he claims exceed eight million, denouncing what he calls “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years.”

“If Venezuela were attacked, it would immediately enter a period of armed struggle,” Maduro told foreign correspondents.