U.S. Defense Secretary Hughes said on October 24 that the U.S. military sank another "drug trafficking ship" in international waters in the Caribbean Sea at night, killing six people on board, the tenth U.S. military strike on suspected drug trafficking vessels, with ten attacks since September that killed at least 43 people.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration submitted a memorandum to Congress stating that the United States and a drug trafficking group identified by the United States as a terrorist organization ¡°are in a non-international armed conflict.¡±