The U.S. Is Leaving Boat Strike Survivors to Drown

The United States left the survivors of a recent boat strike to die at sea, formally abandoning search efforts Friday.

Their presumed deaths are the result of attacks by U.S. forces on three boats in the Pacific Ocean on December 30. After striking one vessel and killing three civilians, crew members of the other boats, according to U.S. Southern Command, “abandoned the other two vessels, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels.”

The unspecified number of survivors who leapt into the Pacific faced nine-foot seas and 40-knot winds, Kenneth Wiese, a spokesperson for the Coast Guard Southwest District, told The Intercept. 

The Coast Guard called off the search for those people on Friday citing a “declining probability of survival.” A U.S. government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said the men are now presumed dead.

The United States has been attacking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific since September, killing at least 117 civilians in 35 attacks — including at least five people on December 30. The total death toll is now unknown, with U.S. Southern Command’s latest tally of attacks and fatalities omitting known strikes and casualties.

Experts in the laws of war and members of Congress, from both parties, have said the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings. At least five civilians are known to have survived previous attacks: two on September 2, two on October 16, and one on October 27. The Intercept was the first outlet to report that the U.S. military killed two survivors of the initial boat attack on September 2 in a follow-up strike. 

William Baumgartner, a retired U.S. Coast Guard rear admiral and former chief counsel of that service branch, said that while there were legal and moral distinctions between attacking the survivors of the September 2 strike and U.S. actions following the December 30 attack, the latter was still tantamount to a death sentence.

“Once the people jump in the water and you blow up the only thing that could possibly save their lives, that’s essentially killing them,” Baumgartner told The Intercept. “The expected result is essentially the same as putting a gun to their head.”

U.S. Southern Command did not answer questions about the number of people killed in the December 30 strike. Steven McLoud, a SOUTHCOM spokesperson, stated that “since September, the Dept. of War has conducted 33 strikes on narco-terrorist vessels, resulting in 34 vessels destroyed and 115 narco-terrorist deaths.” That attack count conflicts with the total of 35 strikes tallied by The Intercept and separately compiled by the boat strike trackers of the New York Times, Military Times, and Airwars, a civilian harm watchdog group.

The death toll proffered by McLoud — 115 people killed — is also incorrect. U.S. Southern Command’s announcement of the December 30 strike noted: “Three narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel were killed in the first engagement. The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels…” Considering the multiple people who jumped into the sea and are now presumed dead, the number of civilians killed must be at least 117.

McLoud did not reply to multiple requests for clarification.

The SOUTHCOM casualty conundrum comes as a new national poll shows that an overwhelming majority of U.S. voters, including 97 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of independents, and 70 percent of Republicans, agree that Americans should have more information on the boat strikes. The survey found 63 percent of respondents support the U.S. government releasing the unedited videos of the boat strikes, including the video of the September 2 attack.

Following an October 16 attack on a semi-submersible in the Caribbean Sea that killed two civilians, two other men were rescued by the U.S. and quickly repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador, respectively. Following three attacks on October 27 that killed 15 people aboard four separate boats, a survivor of a strike was spotted clinging to wreckage, and the U.S. alerted the Mexican Navy. Search teams did not find the man, and he is presumed dead.

Southern Command refused to disclose the location of the December 30 strikes “due to operational security reasons,” a departure from 30 prior attacks. Southern Command did not respond to questions about whether President Donald Trump, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and SOUTHCOM had compromised operational security by announcing the locations of earlier strikes.

The Coast Guard disclosed the approximate location of the December 30 strike, noting that the War Department said people were in the water approximately 400 nautical miles southwest of the Mexico–Guatemala border.

The Coast Guard said that it coordinated more than 65 hours of search efforts, leveraging the efforts of vessels in the region and a Coast Guard aircraft launched from Sacramento. The search covered more than 1,090 nautical miles under “favorable visual conditions” with no sightings of survivors or even debris, according to a January 2 Coast Guard press release.

“Suspending a search is never easy and given the exhaustive search effort, lack of positive indications and declining probability of survival, we have suspended active search efforts pending further developments,” said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Patrick Dill, chief of incident management, Southwest District, on January 2. “At this stage of the response, the likelihood of a successful outcome, based on elapsed time, environmental conditions, and available resources for a person in the water is very low.”

The Coast Guard did not respond to questions concerning those considered lost at sea.

Baumgartner, who began his Coast Guard career at sea and commanded two Coast Guard ships, said that the survivors were unlikely to have lived very long after leaping into the ocean to avoid a missile strike. “If they didn’t have life jackets on, they may well have perished within 30 minutes or so,” he said, citing the extreme wind and sea conditions. “A good swimmer, a fisherman perhaps, might have lasted a little longer than that.”

The boat strikes which began in the Caribbean and spread to the Pacific were the first attacks of a campaign of military and CIA operations that culminated in strikes on Venezuela and the kidnapping of that country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on Saturday.