President Donald Trump said the U.S. military’s attacks on eight ships in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean were legal because they primarily targeted ships from Venezuela and were carrying drugs to be shipped to the United States.
However, Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky), who is also chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said maritime law enforcement statistics show that not all ships suspected of carrying drugs actually have drugs on board. He said the military attack was not consistent with normal U.S. policy.
“When you stop someone on the high seas or in your own country’s waters, you’re going to board a ship and declare that you’re looking for contraband, contraband, drugs. This happens every day outside of Miami,” Paul said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Oct. 19. “We know from Coast Guard statistics that about 25 percent of coast guard boardings there are no drugs present. So if the current policy were to blow up every vessel suspected or accused of smuggling drugs, we would be in a strange world where 25 percent of the population could be innocent.”
Paul also made similar remarks in an interview on October 12th.
The strikes have killed more than 30 people, but the Trump administration has provided no evidence that the ships were carrying drugs. We rated President Trump’s recent statement that each attack saved “25,000 American lives” as false.
Paul’s office pointed PolitiFact to the U.S. Coast Guard’s fiscal year 2024 report, which said the Coast Guard intercepted drugs in about 73 percent of boating incidents that year, and no drugs were obtained in about 27 percent of vessel intercepts.
Experts said the data supported Paul’s point, but noted it was unclear how the Coast Guard defines “drug bust,” a term used to describe drug seizures.
“If[the Coast Guard]boards a vessel and finds a known drug trafficker who doesn’t have drugs, and that person is arrested and convicted, does that constitute ‘interference with drug trafficking?'” said Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. “Or suppose they approach a ship and the ship dumps drugs overboard. So the Coast Guard seizes the ship, but the drugs disappear into the water. Was this a successful disruption?”
Experts said Paul’s numbers may not be directly linked to recent ship attacks because the United States may have had information about specific vessels.
PolitiFact contacted the Coast Guard about its data collection process but did not receive a response.
Coast Guard report reveals details of agency’s drug enforcement efforts
The Coast Guard reports data on the frequency of drug seizures to the Department of Homeland Security. The 2024 fiscal year report, which covers October 2023 to September 2024, summarizes the agency’s performance across various programs.
During that period, the Coast Guard intercepted drug smuggling in 91 out of 125 boat interdictions, a rate of about 73 percent, the report said.
“The quality of searches conducted by Coast Guard boarding teams is high,” the report said, adding that metric is determined by the quality and timeliness of information the agency receives.
In recent years, that percentage has fluctuated. The agency began reporting this drug enforcement data in fiscal year 2021, according to the report, which shows the drug enforcement rate for the year was 59 percent, meaning 41 percent of boats searched did not recover drugs.
The blocking rate rose to 64% in 2022 and 69% in 2023. The drug interdiction rate of 73% in 2024 is the highest since the Coast Guard began tracking data. The company has set an 80% interception rate as its annual goal.
The Coast Guard did not respond to our questions about its data collection process or what constitutes drug busting. The 2025 Coast Guard report, which evaluated agency data from fiscal years 2021 to 2023, found that some reports did not include drug seizure results or required documentation and did not accurately reflect all drug seizures.
Experts said they do not know whether the 2024 Coast Guard statistics directly imply recent attacks in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean.
“Someone with their finger on the trigger may require a much higher degree of certainty before firing,” Caulkins said. “So even if the senator’s numbers are correct when you look across a lot of very diverse activities over a year, that doesn’t mean it applies to the specific case of the Venezuelan boat. Maybe it does, but it probably doesn’t.”
It is impossible to know whether all or some of the ships were carrying deadly drugs, or whether they were on their way to the United States, because the Trump administration lacked information on the types and quantities of drugs allegedly on board the ships.
Drug experts have previously said Venezuela plays a small role in drug trafficking reaching the United States. Most of the illegal fentanyl in the United States comes from Mexico, not Venezuela. It primarily enters the country through official ports of entry on the southern border and is smuggled primarily by U.S. citizens.
our verdict
“About 25 percent of the time the Coast Guard is on board a ship, there are no drugs present,” Paul said.
According to a 2024 Coast Guard report, the Coast Guard boarded and intercepted boats loaded with drugs about 73 percent of the time. This means that in 27 percent of interceptions no drugs were obtained.
But experts said the drug-enforcement statistics may not directly reflect recent ship attacks because they don’t know what information the U.S. had on these vessels.
Paul’s statement is accurate, but requires explanation. We rate it as mostly true.
