President Trump speaks to reporters after arriving on Air Force One, Friday, at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Fla. Mark Schiefelbein/AP hide caption
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Mark Schiefelbein/AP
WASHINGTON — The two survivors of an American military strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean will be sent to Ecuador and Colombia, their home countries, President Donald Trump said Saturday.
The military rescued the pair after striking a submersible vessel Thursday, in what was at least the sixth such attack since early September.
“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump said in a social media post. “U.S. Intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics.”
The Republican president said two people onboard were killed — one more than was previously reported — and the two who survived are being sent to their home countries “for detention and prosecution.”
The repatriation avoids questions for the Trump administration about what the legal status of the two would have been in the U.S. justice system.
With Trump’s confirmation on his Truth Social platform of the death toll, that means U.S. military action against vessels in the region have killed at least 29 people.
The president has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. He is relying on the same legal authority used by the George W. Bush administration when it declared a war on terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks and is treating the suspected traffickers as if they were enemy soldiers in a traditional war.