The CIA reportedly carried out a drone strike last week on a Venezuelan port facility used by drug traffickers, marking the first known U.S. land strike inside the country as President Donald Trump intensifies his pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Multiple news outlets reported that the strike targeted a remote dock along Venezuela’s coast believed by U.S. officials to be used by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational gang designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. According to those reports, the dock was used to store narcotics and prepare them for shipment by boat. Officials said the facility was empty at the time of the strike and no one was killed.
The CIA declined to comment on the operation, and the White House has not issued an official response. The Venezuelan government has also remained silent.
President Donald Trump first revealed the strike publicly during a Dec. 26 radio interview with John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby. Without naming the CIA directly, Trump told listeners that U.S. forces had destroyed a major facility connected to maritime drug trafficking.
“We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said at the time. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
Trump expanded on those remarks Monday at his Mar-a-Lago resort, speaking ahead of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The president described the target as an “implementation area” used by traffickers.
“We hit all the boats and now we hit the area, it’s the implementation area,” Trump said. “That’s where they implement. And that is no longer around.” He added that the strike caused a “major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” noting it took place “along the shore.”
The reported CIA strike comes after Trump confirmed in October that he authorized covert operations inside Venezuela. At the time, Trump said the decision was driven by what he described as Venezuela emptying its prisons and allowing criminals to flow into the United States through the southern border.
Tren de Aragua, the group allegedly tied to the dock facility, has been blamed by U.S. officials for extensive criminal activity and is now formally listed as a terrorist organization, underscoring the administration’s justification for using military and intelligence assets.
Trump has repeatedly warned that his administration would not limit its operations to the sea. Speaking to U.S. military personnel on Thanksgiving, he said traffickers were increasingly avoiding maritime routes and that land-based operations would follow. The reported CIA strike would fulfill that warning, representing the first U.S. land strike in Venezuela since the administration began targeting alleged drug-smuggling boats in September.
Since Sept. 2, U.S. forces have carried out at least 30 lethal strikes against suspected trafficking vessels, killing a minimum of 107 individuals described by the administration as “narco-terrorists.” While there has not been a boat strike in the Caribbean in more than a month, lethal operations have continued in the eastern Pacific. On Monday, U.S. Southern Command announced another strike that destroyed an alleged smuggling vessel and killed two traffickers.
As part of the broader pressure campaign, Trump has also ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. The U.S. Coast Guard has seized at least two tankers off Venezuela’s coast in recent weeks.
Taken together, the reported CIA strike, ongoing maritime operations, and economic measures signal a sharp escalation in Trump’s strategy to confront Maduro’s regime and dismantle the drug trafficking networks operating from Venezuelan territory.
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