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The latest announcement came Thursday, when Mexico said it had
seized nearly four tonnes of suspected drugs and detained three
people from a semisubmersible craft, 250 nautical miles (463
kilometers) south of the port of Manzanillo.
Mexican Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said via X that
the seizure from the sleek, low-riding boat with three visible
motors brought the weekly total to nearly 10 tonnes, but he did
not provide detail on the other seizures.
Mexican authorities said the seizure was made with intelligence
shared U.S. Northern Command and the U.S. Joint Interagency Task
Force South.
On Sunday, El Salvador’s navy announced the largest drug seizure
in the country’s history of 6.6 tonnes of cocaine. The navy had
intercepted a 180-foot boat registered to Tanzania, 380 miles
(611 kilometers) southwest of the coast. Navy divers found 330
packages of cocaine hidden in the boat’s ballast tanks. Ten men
were arrested from Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama and Ecuador.
On Thursday, Salvadoran authorities gave access to the seized
ship FMS Eagle, which had just arrived in the port of La Union.
More than 200 wrapped bundles were lined up on the deck.
The Trump administration has pressured Mexico to make more drug
seizures over the past year. The trafficking of drugs like
fentanyl was the president’s justification for tariffs on
Mexican imports.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has responded with a more
aggressive stance toward drug cartels than her predecessor, that
has included sending dozens of drug trafficking prisoners to the
United States for prosecution.
Sheinbaum has also expressed her disagreement with strikes by
the U.S. military in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean against
boats suspected of carrying drugs.
At least 145 people have been killed in those strikes since the
U.S. government began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists”
last September.
The U.S. strikes this week included two vessels carrying four
people each in the eastern Pacific Ocean and another boat in the
Caribbean carrying three people. The administration provided
images of the boats being destroyed, but not evidence they were
carrying drugs.
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