President Trump said Tuesday that his administration will expand drug strikes to land locations, including in Colombia, after defending the U.S. military attacks on vessels in the Caribbean near Venezuela.
“We’re going to start doing those strikes on land too,” Mr. Trump said at a meeting of his Cabinet officials. “The land is much easier, much easier and we know the routes they take. We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live and we are going to start doing that very soon.”
While Mr. Trump didn’t offer much in the way of specifics, he said that cocaine manufacturing plants would be the likely targets of those strikes.
“Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack, not necessarily just Venezuela,” he said.
The president said Colombia could be a potential target because it has drug manufacturing facilities.
“I hear Colombia is making cocaine. They have cocaine manufacturing plants and then they sell us the cocaine,” he said.
SEE ALSO: Trump touts 91% drop in drug boat trafficking; admin defends deadly strikes
Mr. Trump has previously said that he wants to widen U.S. military attacks against the drug cartels that fueled the deadly domestic opioid crisis. He has also talked about expanding military operations in Venezuela as part of a broader campaign to pressure a regime change against President Nicolas Maduro, sparking fears the U.S. could get into a conflict with Venezuela.
In November, Mr. Trump said he would be “proud” to expand the military operations against drug cartels to land targets.
The Trump administration recently came under bipartisan scrutiny after the Navy executed multiple strikes on an alleged Venezuelan drug-running boat in early September. The second strike reportedly killed two survivors of the initial attack.
The U.S. has destroyed 22 vessels and killed at least 83 people.
