The Trump administration is seizing record-setting amounts of illegal drugs heading for the United States in the months after President Donald Trump declared a new war on drugs upon taking office in January.
The U.S. Coast Guard, a branch of the military housed under the Department of Homeland Security, has surged more crew and ships to international waters where drug smugglers move narcotics, typically from South America to the U.S. In 100 days, the Coast Guard has tripled its forces operating near the southern border.
In that time, Coast Guard cutters returning to U.S. ports following their deployments are offloading more cocaine than ever. Historical records of $50 million to a few hundred million dollars’ worth of cocaine have been smashed in just the past month, which a Coast Guard spokesperson told the Washington Examiner was no coincidence.
“Cocaine seized has increased due to the Coast Guard surging assets to increase operational presence in key areas and protect America’s maritime borders, territorial integrity, and sovereignty,” the Coast Guard official wrote in an email.
Stacking up seizures
In May, the Coast Guard announced $509 million worth of illegal drugs — mostly cocaine — seized from smugglers near Ecuador, Peru, and the Galápagos Islands. The 48,400-pound seizure was composed of more than 90% pure, uncut cocaine, as well as 3,800 pounds of marijuana.
FBI Director Kash Patel attributed the massive seizure to the Trump administration’s comprehensive approach of bringing in military forces, DHS personnel, and other entities to take on traffickers outside the country collectively. Smugglers arrested at sea are brought back to the U.S. and prosecuted for federal drug trafficking crimes.
“This is what it looks like when the United States whole-of-government approach brings every resource to bear,” Patel said during the press conference on April 9.
Weeks earlier, the Coast Guard set a record high for cocaine seized at sea. In late March, the Coast Guard announced a $517 million seizure of illicit drugs, mostly cocaine, while deployed off the coast of Mexico, Central America, and South America. During the deployment, the Coast Guard intercepted 14 smuggling boats.
Last week, the crew of another Coast Guard cutter returned to port with more than $214 million worth of cocaine on board.
The Coast Guard’s shared responsibility
Catching drugs before they reach the U.S. puts less pressure on customs officers from Customs and Border Protection, another DHS agency, to find them while inspecting all incoming people, goods, and vehicles at the ports of entry.
The Coast Guard’s authority starts beyond 12 miles out from the U.S. coast, and it has the authority to patrol international waters, according to Jamie Mortensen of the radar company SpotterRF.
“Coastguards work hard to perform their duties, but are often unable to exert total control over their entire coast and the sea surrounding their nation’s borders. It’s not like monitoring a road,” Mortensen wrote in a post. “Traveling over open water, errant vessels can sail in at hundreds of different points, from hundreds of different angles.”
To patrol the seas, the Coast Guard relies on CBP’s Air and Marine Operations arm. AMO agents fly 10- to 12-hour stints daily over international waters during deployments to Central and South America. They get a bird’s-eye view of suspicious boats out at sea and call them in to the Coast Guard, which then moves in and interdicts the boat and crew.
“Their operations are significantly helped, however, by reliable satellite, sonar, and radar surveillance, making them able to detect and track potential threats at long distances and over wide areas of open sea,” Mortensen wrote.
Josh Wallshein, a fellow at the independent Orion Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., explained that cartels use the ocean to move drugs because it is immune from land border checkpoints.
“Cartels use maritime routes in the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea because it has less risk and high reward, and it is easy to bypass security measures,” Wallshein wrote in an op-ed.
Patrolling against the maritime drug threat
Shortly after taking office, Trump clamped down on cross-border drug smuggling, imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico because fentanyl was slipping into the country from both of the U.S.’s neighboring countries. He’s cited a “public health crisis and national emergency” regarding drugs to underpin his trade policies on foreign countries.
The Trump administration also declared eight Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and deployed 10,000 troops to the southern border.
The military’s U.S. Northern Command, which handles protecting the U.S. and its coastlines, deployed the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely in March to interdict drugs in the Gulf Coast and surrounding areas.
“There’s a sea component” to stopping illicit smuggling and immigration, which is “part of the mission of the USS Gravely,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said at the time.
In February and March, CBP personnel who work on the U.S. border seized a total of less than 10,000 pounds of cocaine — a small amount compared to how much was prevented from making it to the border as a result of being intercepted while in transport.
CBP’s AMO arm, which works with the Coast Guard, caught 33,000 pounds of cocaine in that same period.
Let’s go
….#MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/LamXDAolgy
— CBP AMO (@CBPAMO) March 31, 2025
Cocaine’s prevalence in society
Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia — in that order — are most responsible for the thousands of tons of cocaine cultivated annually, according to a 2024 report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
Globally, cocaine is one of the most sought-after drugs in the world, and its production levels have only increased.
“In 2022, cannabis remained the most used drug world-wide, with an estimated 228 million users in the past year, followed by opioids, with 60 million, amphetamine-type stimulants, with 30 million, and cocaine and ‘ecstasy’, with 23 million and 20 million, respectively,” the UNODC concluded.
Drug overdose deaths involving cocaine have risen steadily over the past two decades. In 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 6,784 cocaine-related deaths.
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The reason for the increase is due to illicit drugmakers mixing fentanyl into cocaine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“The number of deaths in combination with fentanyl has increased significantly since 2015 and is the main driver of cocaine-involved overdose deaths,” NIDA wrote in a statement.