Trump says two survivors of US submarine attack will be sent to Ecuador and Colombia in move that avoids legal fight
President Donald Trump said the two survivors of a US attack on a ship in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs are being sent back to their home countries.
“The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution,” Trump posted on his social media platform Saturday afternoon.
Trump said the ship that got stuck was a submarine and that U.S. intelligence indicated it was carrying fentanyl and other illegal narcotics.
It was the sixth attack on a ship in the Caribbean since the Trump administration stepped up operations there over the summer, which it says is necessary to stem the tide of illicit drugs entering the US.
Repatriating the suspected drug traffickers avoids what could have been a complicated legal battle for the administration and could have challenged Trump’s “war” on the cartels. Under the law, unarmed combatants in military custody can protest their detention in court.
Trump has insisted that he has the legal authority to use lethal military force against drug cartels, rather than relying on law enforcement to intercept drugs, because he says cartels fall into the same category as terrorist organizations that pose an imminent threat to the United States.
President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a lunch in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, October 17, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
In a legal defense presented to Congress, Trump told lawmakers that the United States is in a “armed conflict” with the cartels and that drug traffickers are “unarmed combatants.
Some legal experts have said that argument is unlikely to hold up in court. However, it was unclear who would challenge Trump’s reasoning in defense of drug cartels, as few lawmakers spoke out against it and Trump continued to expand military operations in the region in recent weeks.
The existence of survivors of the last military attack could have forced the matter to be brought before a judge if either of the two survivors had protested their status as “illegal combatants.”
Sending survivors to other countries basically keeps the matter out of the judicial system.
Trump’s measures in the Caribbean have increased tensions in the region, especially with the Venezuelan government, whose leader the United States does not consider legitimate. Earlier this week, Trump threatened to strike inside Venezuela, confirmed ongoing covert operations inside the country and ordered B-52 bombers off the coast of Venezuela.
