71% of Americans back Trump's attacks on drug cartel boats: Harvard/Harris poll

A new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 71 percent of American voters back the deployment of US military forces to target and eliminate drug traffickers in Latin America, including sinking cartel vessels en route to US shores.

71 percent of voters overall backed the use of military forces to target drug traffickers, along with 56 percent of Democrats, 89 percent of Republicans, and 67 percent of independents. The survey, conducted online between October 1 and 2, included 2,413 registered US voters and has a margin of error of 1.99 percent.

President Trump has made taking on the cartels a key focus of his administration. Shortly after reentering the White House in January, the president designated certain cartel groups as foreign terrorist organizations, paving the way for military and law enforcement actions aimed at restoring safety across America's borders and communities.

This designation allows the US government to deploy counter-terrorism resources, including financial sanctions and direct strikes against cartel operations. Trump emphasized that the move is essential to combating the fentanyl crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives, vowing to dismantle the "criminal empires" that flood the nation with deadly narcotics.

During a Wednesday meeting with Cabinet members at the White House, Trump detailed his vision to eliminate cartels, describing the terrorist drug trafficking groups as the "ISIS of the Western Hemisphere." He vowed to kill them.

"These groups have unleashed more bloodshed and killing on American soil than all other terrorist groups combined. These are the worst of the worst. It should now be clear to the entire world that the cartels are the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere, in addition to their monstrous violence, such as cutting off heads, burning their enemies alive, and burning innocent people alive too," Trump said during a Homeland Security Task Force roundtable. 

He later announced that the objective of the administration would be to "eliminate" the threat of the terror groups.

"We're finally treating the cartels as the core national security threat that they really are. The cartels are waging war on America, and just as I promised in the campaign, we're waging war on them like they've never seen before," Trump added. 

The roundtable comes shortly after President Trump released unclassified footage of a US military operation involving a cartel drug boat being blown up in Latin American waters.