Over 2,200 lbs of cocaine seized after Trump admin strike on cartel boat

In a press conference in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican Republic’s National Directorate for Drug Control said that there were 1,000 kilograms (2,204 lbs) of the illicit drug in 377 different packages. The US conducted an airstrike against the boat around 80 nautical miles from the island of Beata, an island belonging to the DR's territory, per the New York Post.

The DR worked with US authorities in order to locate the speedboat carrying the haul of drugs. The traffickers allegedly planned to use the DR as a "bridge" between Venezuela and the US. “This is the first time in history that the United States and the Dominican Republic carry out a joint operation against narco terrorism in the Caribbean,” DR officials said in a statement.

The Trump administration in August sent a fleet of warships as well as a submarine into the southern Caribbean in order to combat drug trafficking. The White House has said that three speedboats carrying drugs to the US have been subject to strikes and over a dozen people have been killed as they were transporting the drugs.

Activist groups, however, have said that the strikes are killings without judicial process. The Trump administration has labeled the drug cartels as well as foreign gangs foreign terrorist organizations, meaning that military strikes can be conducted against them. Two Democrat Senators have also introduced a resolution looking to block the administration from conducting more strikes. Two of the three boats that the White House has ordered to be struck have come from Venezuela. Trump has also described Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro as a drug trafficker and leader of a gang known as the Cartel of the Suns.

Maduro, however, has denied the accusations, and said that sending the fleet of boats into the Caribbean is a targeting of the country.