{"id":3458,"date":"2025-10-27T14:35:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/10\/27\/fact-check-do-quarter-of-uss-drug-boat-searches-find-nothing\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T14:35:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:35:56","slug":"fact-check-do-quarter-of-uss-drug-boat-searches-find-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/10\/27\/fact-check-do-quarter-of-uss-drug-boat-searches-find-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact check: Do quarter of US\u2019s \u2018drug boat\u2019 searches find nothing?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump says US military strikes on eight vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean<\/a>, mostly targeting boats from Venezuela, were legal because they carried drugs being delivered to the United States.<\/p>\n

But Republican Senator Rand Paul, Kentucky, who is also chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said maritime law enforcement statistics show that not all boats suspected of carrying drugs actually have drugs onboard. He said the military\u2019s strikes<\/a> were not in line with usual US policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you stop people at sea in international waters, or in your own waters, you announce that you\u2019re going to board the ship and you\u2019re looking for contraband, smuggling or drugs. This happens every day off of Miami,\u201d Paul said on October 19 on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d programme. \u201cWe know from Coast Guard statistics that about 25 percent of the time the Coast Guard boards a ship, there are no drugs. So if our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world in which 25 percent of the people might be innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul made a similar statement in an\u00a0October 12 interview.<\/p>\n

More than 30 people have been killed so far in the strikes, and the Trump administration has provided no evidence<\/a> that the vessels contained drugs. We rated Trump\u2019s recent statement that each strike saved \u201c25,000 American lives\u201d false<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s office pointed PolitiFact to the US Coast Guard\u2019s 2024 fiscal year report, which said that year the agency intercepted drugs in about 73 percent of cases when they boarded boats, with about 27 percent of vessel interceptions yielding no drugs.<\/p>\n

Experts said the data supports Paul\u2019s point, but noted that it\u2019s unclear how the Coast Guard defines the term it uses to describe intercepting drugs \u2013 \u201ca drug disruption\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the (Coast Guard) boards a vessel and finds a known drug trafficker but no drugs, and that individual gets arrested and convicted, does that count as a \u2018drug disruption\u2019?\u201d said Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University drug policy researcher. \u201cOr suppose they approach the vessel, it jettisons the drugs overboard, and so the Coast Guard seizes the vessel but the drugs have disappeared into the water. Is that a successful disruption?\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s figure might not translate directly to the recent boat strikes, experts said, since the US could have had intelligence about those specific vessels.<\/p>\n

PolitiFact contacted the Coast Guard about its data collection process but did not hear back.<\/p>\n

Coast Guard report details the agency\u2019s drug interceptions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Coast Guard reports data about how often it intercepts drugs to the Department of Homeland Security. Its 2024 fiscal year report, which covers October 2023 to September 2024, summarises the agency\u2019s performance in various programmes.<\/p>\n

During that period of time, the Coast Guard disrupted drug runs in 91 out of 125 boat interdictions, the report says, which was a rate of about 73 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of searches performed by Coast Guard boarding teams is high,\u201d the report said, adding that its metrics depend on the quality and timeliness of the intelligence the agency receives.<\/p>\n

The rate has varied in recent years. The agency started reporting this drug interception data in fiscal year 2021, according to the report, which shows a drug disruption rate that year of 59 percent \u2013 meaning 41 percent of boats searched yielded no drugs.<\/p>\n

The interception rate rose to 64 percent in 2022 and 69 percent in 2023. The 2024 drug interception rate of 73 percent represents the Coast Guard\u2019s highest since it started tracking the data. It lists an 80 percent interception rate as its annual goal.<\/p>\n

The Coast Guard didn\u2019t answer our questions about its data collection process or what amounts to a drug disruption. A\u00a02025 Coast Guard report\u00a0evaluating agency data from fiscal years 2021 through 2023 found it didn\u2019t accurately reflect all drug interdictions as some reports didn\u2019t contain drug seizure results or the required documentation.<\/p>\n

Experts said we don\u2019t know whether the 2024 Coast Guard statistic directly translates to the recent strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people with fingers on the trigger may demand a much higher certainty rate before shooting,\u201d Caulkins said. \u201cSo, even if the senator\u2019s figure were correct when looking across all the many, very diverse operations over the course of a year, that doesn\u2019t mean it applies to the special case of boats of Venezuela<\/a>. Perhaps it does, but perhaps not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s lack of information about the type or quantity of drugs it says were on the boats makes it impossible to know if every or any of the boats carried lethal drugs, and if they were en route to the US.<\/p>\n

Drug experts\u00a0previously told us that Venezuela plays a minor role in trafficking drugs that reach the US. Most illicit fentanyl in the US comes from Mexico<\/a>, not Venezuela. It enters the country mainly through the southern border at official ports of entry, and is smuggled in\u00a0mostly by US citizens.<\/p>\n

Our ruling<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Paul said, \u201cAbout 25 percent of the time the Coast Guard boards a ship, there are no drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 2024 Coast Guard report said the agency boarded and intercepted boats with drugs on them about 73 percent of the time, which means 27 percent of the interceptions yielded no drugs.<\/p>\n

This drug disruption statistic, however, might not translate directly to the recent boat strikes, experts said, since we don\u2019t know what kind of intelligence the US had about those vessels.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s statement is accurate but needs clarification. We rate it Mostly True.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump says US military strikes on eight vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, mostly targeting boats from Venezuela, were legal because they carried drugs being delivered to the United States. But Republican Senator Rand Paul, Kentucky, who is also chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said maritime law enforcement … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}