Drug boats from Venezuela are mainly moving cocaine to Europe — not fentanyl to the U.S., experts say

The U.S. military has been striking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, but the cargo is likely cocaine headed to Europe, experts say.

President Donald Trump and his Pentagon chief say U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats in waters off Latin America are saving lives by preventing narcotics from reaching America’s shores.

But drug cartels operating vessels in the Caribbean, where roughly 50% of the airstrikes have taken place, are mainly moving cocaine from South America to Europe — not to the United States, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement and military officials as well as narcotics experts. And the deadliest drug of all, fentanyl, is almost exclusively smuggled over land from Mexico, the officials and experts say.

The realities of the drug trade in Latin America call into question part of the administration’s stated rationale for its unprecedented military campaign against suspected narcotics smuggling boats, and whether it will have any significant effect on the supply of narcotics in the United States, according to the officials and experts.

“Fentanyl is not coming out of Venezuela. Fentanyl comes from Mexico,” said Christopher Hernandez-Roy, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “What’s coming out of Venezuela is cocaine.”

And most of that cocaine is no longer headed to the U.S., according to Hernandez-Roy, who co-authored a 2023 report on the subject.