President Donald Trump posted a clip on his Truth Social platform revealing the largest ever seizure of precursor chemicals used to make methamphetamines, substances that a top prosecutor said were shipped from China to Mexico but intercepted by U.S. authorities at sea.
Why It Matters
The announcement comes a day after Trump said that the U.S. had struck a “drug-carrying boat” in the Caribbean, in a major escalation of his campaign against drugs and crime.
Trump said U.S. Southern Command forces “conducted a kinetic strike” on what he described as “Narcoterrorists” working for the Tren de Aragua gang in international waters on September 2.
He said the strike killed 11 people, with no U.S. personnel injured, and accused Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, of supporting smuggling gangs. Caracas has denied this repeatedly.
What To Know
The top federal prosecutor for Washington D.C., Jeanine Pirro, said 1,300 barrels of precursor chemicals, weighing 700,000 pounds, had been seized.
“You are looking at the largest seizure of precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine in U.S. history,” Pirro was quoted as saying in Trump’s post.
“These 1,300 barrels were shipped from Shanghai, China, to Mexico,” Pirro said in a video clip that Trump posted, as she walked among an expanse of blue barrels wrapped in plastic in Houston, Texas.
Trump has cited the smuggled supply of fentanyl as a reason for imposing tariffs on China. The White House has said Chinese officials have “failed” to stem the flow of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl to criminal cartels.
China says it has taken steps to control the trade of such chemicals.
Pirro said the seized chemicals were bound for Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa drug cartel.
“We intercepted these precursors on the high seas and now the Sinaloa cartel will not be able to use them to make methamphetamines,” she said.
“Whenever there is an effort on the part of foreign terrorist organizations to create drugs that are killing Americans, we will seize them, whether it’s on the high seas or whether it’s in the country or in a foreign country,” she said.
That warning comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Trump is gathering “incredible assets” for offensive action targeting drug cartels in Venezuela.
What People Are Saying
Pirro, in the Truth Social post, said: “Because President Trump and Secretary Rubio declared the Sinaloa Cartel a Foreign Terrorist Organization, we can now strike faster and hit harder.”
Trump, referring to the Tuesday strike on the boat in the Caribbean, said on Truth Social: “Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”
What Happens Next
The warnings from Trump and Pirro, and Hegseth’s comment about forces gathering, suggest that the U.S. military will take further action in an expanding the U.S. war on drugs.
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