President Trump said Tuesday his administration could attack accused drug traffickers who traverse Latin America by land "very soon," which would mark an escalation in the U.S. military's campaign of lethal strikes on alleged drug boats.
"We're going to start doing those strikes on land, too," Mr. Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting when asked about the administration's strikes at sea. "You know, the land is 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're going to start that very soon, too."
Mr. Trump did not definitively say when or where any possible land strikes might take place.
Officials have discussed possible military operations in Venezuela in recent weeks, CBS News has previously reported, as the Trump administration accuses Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of working with drug cartels — a charge Maduro denies.
But Mr. Trump said Tuesday that land strikes would not necessarily be limited to Venezuela. He said any country where illicit drugs are produced or trafficked "is subject to attack," and singled out neighboring Colombia, which the U.S. has accused of failing to control the drug trade.
The president has hinted for months that he may broaden his administration's sea-based strikes to include accused drug targets on land, telling reporters in October that he is "totally prepared" to carry out land strikes.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military has built up its presence in the Caribbean, dispatching the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier to the region and sending F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico. And over the weekend, Mr. Trump said the airspace over Venezuela should be considered closed.
If the president takes the step of ordering strikes on targets within Latin American countries, it would significantly expand the Trump administration's anti-drug trafficking operations, which have hit upward of 20 alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing more than 80 people.
