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WASHINGTON (AP) — PresidentDonald Trumpsaid Wednesday that the United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela astensions mountwith the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Using U.S. forces to take control of a merchant ship is incredibly unusual and marks the Trump administration's latest push to increase pressure on Maduro, who has beencharged with narcoterrorismin the United States. The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series ofdeadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boatsin the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The campaign is facing growing scrutiny from Congress.

"We've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually," Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding that "it was seized for a very good reason."

Trump did not offer additional details. When asked what would happen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, "Well, we keep it, I guess."

The seizure was led by the U.S. Coast Guard and supported by the Navy, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official added that it was conducted under U.S. law enforcement authority.

Storming the oil tanker

The Coast Guard members were taken to the oil tanker by helicopter from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the official said. The Ford is in the Caribbean Sea after arriving last month in a major show of force, joining a fleet of other warships.

Video posted to social mediaby Attorney General Pam Bondi shows people fast-roping from one of the helicopters involved in the operation as it hovers just feet from the deck.

The Coast Guard members can be seen later in the video moving throughout the superstructure of the ship with their weapons drawn.

Bondi wrote that "for multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations."

Venezuela's government said in a statement that the seizure "constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy."

"Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed. … It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people," the statement said.

Half of ship's oil is tied to Cuban importer

The U.S. official identified the seized tanker as the Skipper.

The ship departed Venezuela around Dec. 2 with about 2 million barrels of heavy crude, roughly half of it belonging to a Cuban state-run oil importer, according to documents from the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA, that were provided on the condition of anonymity because the person did not have permission to share them.

The Skipper was previously known as the M/T Adisa, according to ship tracking data. The Adisa was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over accusations of belonging to a sophisticated network of shadow tankers that smuggled crude oil on behalf of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.

The network was reportedly run by a Switzerland-based Ukrainian oil trader, the U.S. Treasury Department said at the time.

Hitting Venezuela's sanctioned oil business

Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day.

PDVSA is the backbone of the country's economy. Its reliance on intermediaries increased in 2020, when the first Trump administration expanded its maximum-pressure campaign on Venezuela with sanctions that threaten to lock out of the U.S. economy any individual or company that does business with Maduro's government. Longtime allies Russia and Iran, both also sanctioned, have helped Venezuela skirt restrictions.

The transactions usually involve a complex network of shadowy intermediaries. Many are shell companies, registered in jurisdictions known for secrecy. The buyers deploy so-called ghost tankers that hide their location and hand off their valuable cargoes in the middle of the ocean before they reach their final destination.

Maduro did not address the seizure during a speech before a ruling-party organized demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela's capital. But he told supporters that the country is "prepared to break the teeth of the North American empire if necessary."

Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Democrat says the move is about 'regime change'

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. seizing the oil tanker cast doubt on the administration's stated reasons for the military buildup and boat strikes.

"This shows that their whole cover story — that this is about interdicting drugs — is a big lie," the senator said. "This is just one more piece of evidence that this is really about regime change — by force."

Vincent P. O'Hara, a naval historian and author of "The Greatest Naval War Ever Fought," called the seizure "very unusual" and "provocative." "As far as the principle of seizing ships on the high sea, that's an important international question," he said. "Nations go to war over that principle."

The seizure comes a day after the U.S. militaryflew a pair of fighter jetsover the Gulf of Venezuela in what appeared to be the closest that warplanes had come to the South American country's airspace. Trump has saidland attacks are coming soonbut has not offered more details.

The Trump administration is facingincreasing scrutiny from lawmakersover the boat strike campaign, which has killed at least 87 people in22 known strikessince early September, includinga follow-up strike that killed two survivorsclinging to the wreckage of a boat after the first hit.

Some legal experts and Democrats saythat action may have violated the laws governing the use of deadly military force.

Lawmakers aredemanding to get unedited videofrom the strikes, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional leaders at a classified briefing Tuesday that he was still weighing whether to release it.

The Coast Guard referred a request for comment about the tanker seizure to the White House.

Goodman reported from Miami, and Garcia Cano from Caracas, Venezuela. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

GRAFTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia National Guard member who was fatally shotlast month in the nation's capitalwas laid to rest with full military honors in a private ceremony.

Spc. Sarah Beckstrom's funeral took place Tuesday at the West Virginia National Cemetery in Grafton, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said in a statement.

"The ceremony was deeply moving and reflected the strength, grace, and love of a remarkable young woman and the family and friends who surrounded her," Morrisey said.

Beckstrom graduated with honors from Webster County High School in 2023 and joined the National Guard several weeks later. She served in the 863rd Military Police Company.

Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfewere ambushed as they patrolled a subway station three blocks from the White House on Nov. 26.She diedthe next day.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a29-year-old Afghan nationalwho was also shot during the confrontation, has been charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty.

Morrisey has said Wolfe, who remains in a hospital in Washington,is slowly healingand his family expects he will be in acute care for another few weeks.

Federal health officials on Wednesdayexpanded an outbreakof infant botulism tied to recalled ByHeart baby formula to include all illnesses reported since the company began production in March 2022.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said investigators "cannot rule out the possibility that contamination might have affected all ByHeart formula products" ever made.

The outbreaknow includesat least 51 infants in 19 states. The new case definition includes "any infant with botulism who was exposed to ByHeart formula at any time since the product's release," according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most recent illness was reported on Dec. 1.

No deaths have been reported in the outbreak, which was announced Nov. 8.

Previously, health officials had saidthe outbreakincluded 39 suspected or confirmed cases of infant botulism reported in 18 states since August. That's when officials at California's Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program reported a rise in treatment of infants who had consumed ByHeart formula. With the expanded definition, the CDC identified 10 additional cases that occurred from December 2023 through July 2025.

ByHeart, a New York-based manufacturer of organic infant formula founded in 2016,recalled all its productssold in the U.S. on Nov. 11. The company, which accounts for about 1% of the U.S. infant formula market, had been selling about 200,000 cans of the product each month.

News that ByHeart products could have been contaminated for years was distressing to Andi Galindo, whose 5-week-old daughter, Rowan, was hospitalized in December 2023 with infant botulism after drinking the formula. Galindo, 36, of Redondo Beach, California, said she insisted on using ByHeart formula to supplement a low supply of breast milk because it was recommended by a lactation consultant as "very natural, very gentle, very good for the babies."

"That's a hard one," Galindo said. "If there is proof that there were issues with their manufacturing and their plant all the way back from the beginning, that is a problem and they really need to be held accountable."

Amy Mazziotti, 43, of Burbank, California, said her then-5-month-old son, Hank, fell ill and was treated for botulism in March, weeks after he began drinking ByHeart. Being included in the investigation of the outbreak "feels like a win for all of us," she said Wednesday.

"I've known in my gut from the beginning that ByHeart was the reason Hank got sick, and to see that these cases are now part of the investigation brings me to tears — a mix of relief, gratitude and hope that the truth is finally being recognized," she said.

ByHeart officials did not immediately respond to questions about the expanded outbreak.

Lab tests detected contamination

The FDA sent inspectors last month to ByHeart plants in Allerton, Iowa, and Portland, Oregon, where the formula is produced and packaged. The agency has released no results from those inspections.

The companypreviously reportedthat tests by an independent laboratory showed that 36 samples from three different lots contained the type of bacteria that can cause infant botulism.

"We cannot rule out the risk that all ByHeart formula across all product lots may have been contaminated," the company wrote on its website last month.

Those results and discussions with the FDA led CDC officials to expand the outbreak, according to Dr. Jennifer Cope, a CDC scientist leading the investigation.

"It looks like the contamination appeared to persist across all production runs, different lots, different raw material lots," Cope said. "They couldn't isolate it to specific lots from a certain time period."

Inspection documents showed that ByHeart had a history of problems with contamination.

In 2022, the year ByHeart started making formula, the company recalled five batches of infant formula after a sample at a packaging plant tested positive for a different germ, cronobacter sakazakii. In 2023, the FDA sent a warning letter to the company detailing "areas that still require corrective actions."

A ByHeart plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, was shut down in 2023 just before FDA inspectors found problems with mold, water leaks and insects, documents show.

Infant botulism is rare

Infant botulism is a rare disease that affects fewer than 200 babies in the U.S. each year. It's caused when infants ingest botulism bacteria that produce spores that germinate in the intestines, creating a toxin that affects the nervous system. Babies are vulnerable until about age 1 because their gut microbiomes are not mature enough to fight the toxin.

Baby formula has previously been linked to sporadic cases of illness, but no known outbreaks of infant botulism tied to powdered formula have previously been confirmed, according to research studies.

Symptoms can take up to 30 days to develop and can include constipation, poor feeding, loss of head control, drooping eyelids and a flat facial expression. Babies may feel "floppy" and can have problems swallowing or breathing.

Thesole treatmentfor infant botulism is known as BabyBIG, an IV medication made from the pooled blood plasma of adults immunized against botulism. California's infant botulism program developed the product and is the sole source worldwide.

The antibodies provided by BabyBIG are likely most effective for about a month, although they may continue circulating in the child's system for several months, said Dr. Sharon Nachman, an expert in pediatric infectious disease at Stony Brook Children's Hospital.

"The risk to the infant is ongoing and the family should not be using this formula after it was recalled," Nachman said in an email.

Families of several babies treated for botulism after drinking ByHeart formula havesued the company.Lawsuits filed in federal courts allege that the formula they fed their children was defective and ByHeart was negligent in selling it. They seek financial payment for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The local organizing committee helping Seattle host the2026 FIFA World Cupis moving forward with plans for a "Pride Match" over the fierce objections of both countries slated to play in the game.

Egypt and Iran were randomly placed in Group G together and then selected to face one another on June 26 in Seattle as part oflast week's World Cup draw, setting up the odd twist of a match with previously scheduled LGBTQ+ celebrations featuring two countries that impose severe penalties on LGBTQ+ people.

The Egyptian Football Association said earlier this weekit sent a letter to FIFA stating it "categorically rejects any activities promoting LGBTQ during the match." Iran Football Federation president Mehdi Taj also confirmed during a state television interview that his country filed a formal complaint,according to ESPN, and planned to bring up the issue during a FIFA Council meeting in Qatar next week.

But organizers in the Pacific Northwest remain steadfast in holding the event as planned in conjunction with the annualSeattle PrideFestand addressed the brewing situation in light of displeasure expressed by Egypt and Iran.

Photos show Trump and celebs gather for 2026 World Cup draw

OFF THE FIELD:FIFA accused of breaking ethics rules after giving Peace Prize to Trump

"As the Local Organizing Committee, SeattleFWC26's role is to prepare our city to host the matches and manage the city experience outside of Seattle Stadium," Seattle FIFA World Cup 26 Vice President of Communications Hana Tadesse said in a statement provided toUSA TODAY Sportson Wednesday, Dec. 10. "SeattleFWC26 is moving forward as planned with our community programming outside the stadium during Pride weekend and throughout the tournament, partnering with LGBTQ+ leaders, artists, and business owners to elevate existing Pride celebrations across Washington.

"Football has a unique power to unite people across borders, cultures, and beliefs. The Pacific Northwest is home to one of the nation's largest Iranian-American communities, a thriving Egyptian diaspora, and rich communities representing all nations we're hosting in Seattle. We're committed to ensuring all residents and visitors experience the warmth, respect, and dignity that defines our region."

Same-sex relations can carry the death penalty in Iran,according to Reuters, while in Egypt, morality laws are often used to prosecute LGBTQ+ people. FIFA has not yet commented on the situation, though the "Pride Match" festivities surrounding the June 26 match are not officially affiliated with soccer's international governing body.

At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, FIFA threatened yellow cards for players wearing the "OneLove" armband in support of LGBTQ+ rights because of the host nation's culture,prompting teams like England and Wales to scrap plans to use it.

The Egyptian Football Association said its position was based on FIFA's statutes related to neutrality in political and social matters during competition and fan behavior. Taj called it "an unreasonable and illogical move that essentially signals support for a particular group, and we must definitely address this point."

"These activities directly conflict with the cultural, religious and social values of the region, particularly in Arab and Islamic societies," the Egyptian Football Association wrote. "While FIFA is committed to ensuring a respectful environment that welcomes all fans, it is essential to avoid activities that could spark tension or misunderstanding between supporters from Egypt and Iran. We call on FIFA to guarantee that the match takes place in an atmosphere focused solely on sport and free from displays that contradict the beliefs of the participating nations."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Seattle World Cup 'Pride Match' still on after Egypt, Iran complaints

Another batch of World Cup tickets hit the primary market on Thursday morning, with fans focused on the recently unveiled match schedule and their ballooning credit card balances.

This will be the first box office sale sincelast week's drawthat determined group settings and nearly the fulllisting of matchups, dates and times.

Previous ticket sales were just for dates and venues, without the benefit of knowing which teams would be playing at each site and time slot.

How to buy tickets for the World Cup

• After establishing an account with FIFA, fans can sign in between 11 a.m. EST Thursday and Jan. 13. The timing of entry does not impact success, according to FIFA.

• That's when and where fans can pick matches they want to attend and the price category of tickets.

• Credit cards will be automatically charged for all tickets they win in this lottery draw. So fans should not apply for more tickets that they can afford.

• The maximum number of tickets that can be purchased for any one match is four; and the max for the entire tournament is 40, throughout all FIFA sales.

Now, 42 of the tournament's 48 teams have already qualified and consumers can shop for their individual favorite team, as long as they're among the three and a half dozen squads to have already punched their tickets for North America for this summer.

Six more slots are still open and will be filled in the coming months, with squads such as four-time champion Italy, sentimental favorite Ukraine, or Turkey, seeking its first tournament appearance since its third-place finish of 2002, vying for those cherished spots.

If the secondary ticket market is any indicator, matches at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City or those featuring hosts the United States, Canada or El Tri will be the competition's hottest ducats.

There are 72 group stage matches spread across 16 North American venues, each playing host to three, four or five matches.

Three contests slated for the Mexican capital have some of the tournament's highest "get in" prices, in other words, the highest amount of money needed just to purchase the worst seats in the house.

At about midday Wednesday, the cheapest pair of tickets into Match 1 on June 11, featuring host Mexico vs. South Africa, cost just over $3,900, according to American secondary seller StubHub. The three group stage contests in Mexico City are going for an average of $2,300 a ticket.

The most affordable admissions could be inAtlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where five matchesthere had average get-in prices in the low $300s on Wednesday.

That's a bit surprising when considering that local Atlanta United FC is among the biggest draws in the MLS and group stage matches there feature two games of perennial powerhouse Spain and itsteen superstar Lamine Yamal.

Overall, in group stage action, matches involving Mexico cost more than $2,600 to get inside, according to StubHub listings on Wednesday afternoon, while Americans and Canadian baseline prices were hovering around $1,100.

Other big ticket teams include Brazil, Portugal, Argentina and Colombia with get-in prices averaging more than $1,000 a ticket. Argentina, the defending champion, boasts a team that will likely feature Lionel Messi, while Portugal has Cristiano Ronaldo.

Cost-conscious soccer fans could satisfy their fix for the beautiful game by checkingout first-time qualifier Cabo Verde. A ticket to a Blue Sharks match, at this moment on the secondary market, could go for in the low-$300s.

Tickets for matches between Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are now in the mid-$300s.

Longtime play-by-play man Joe Buck has beenannounced as the 2026 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, which is given by the baseball Hall of Fame for excellence in broadcasting.

Buck and his dad Jack are now the only father-son duo to win the Frick Award. Jack Buck, who worked St. Louis Cardinals and national broadcasts for nearly half a century, won the award in 1987.

"Joe Buck authored his own historic legacy while following in the footsteps of his father on a path to Cooperstown," said Josh Rawitch, President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. "During an era of unprecedented audience growth throughout the game, Joe was the voice of the World Series and the All-Star Game, calling the biggest moments in baseball for more than a quarter of a century. He was a Saturday staple in homes across America while still serving as the voice of his hometown St. Louis Cardinals."

According to the baseball Hall of Fame, Joe Buck was one of 10 finalists along with Brian Anderson, Skip Caray, René Cárdenas, Gary Cohen, Jacques Doucet, Duane Kuiper, John Rooney, Dan Shulman, and John Sterling.

Buck got his start with the Cardinals' Triple-A affiliate in Louisville in 1989 before joining his dad in the big leagues on Cardinals broadcasts from 1991 through 2007.

A little over a decade after his start calling games, Buck was hired to do national NFL and MLB broadcasts for Fox Sports. In 1996, he called his first World Series at age 27 as the New York Yankees defeated the Atlanta Braves.

"The Yankees are champions of baseball!"27 years ago today, the Yankees won the 1996 World Series.pic.twitter.com/9eIqc35IU0

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees)October 26, 2023

During Buck's time as the national broadcaster for the MLB on Fox, he called 26 League Championship Series, 21 All-Star Games and 24 World Series.

In 2022, Buck joinedESPN to be the play-by-play voice of Monday Night Footballwith Troy Aikman, his NFL broadcast partner at Fox.

Buck was named the winner of the2020 Pro Football Hall of Fame Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award, which is given to broadcasters "for longtime exceptional contributions to radio and television in professional football." He joined his dad, Dick Enberg, Curt Gowdy, Al Michaels and Lindsey Nelson as the only broadcasters to win the award and the Frick Award.

The 56-year-old Buck is the second-youngest Frick Award winner. Only Vin Scully was younger when he won the award in 1982 at 54. He will be honored during Hall of Fame Weekend, July 24-27.

The U.S. military knew the identities of the 11 men killed in aSept. 2 boat strike in the Caribbeanand approved the hit because the crewmembers apparently had loose ties to a drug cartel, the military commander who led the operation told lawmakers last week, according to two people with knowledge of the briefing.

In a Dec. 4 classified briefing with a select group of lawmakers, Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley, who has been on the hot seat for weeks due to his role in the attack, said the military deemed the people on board legitimate targets because some had contact with members of drug cartels the Trump administration has declared foreign terrorist organizations, the two people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Bradley did not provide lawmakers with documentation that the boat carried drugs. He also stated that follow-up strikes sank the wreckage of the bombed boat, destroying possible evidence of drug trafficking, the people said.

US military conducts deadly boat strikes against alleged drug traffickers

NBC previously reportedthat the 11 men were on an internal list of "narco-terrorists" who were cleared to be targeted.

Survivors couldn't radio for help

Bradley, the commander of Special Operations Command, has come under scrutiny in recent weeks after the Trump administration confirmed that he ordered a second strike on the wreckage of the boat roughly 40 minutes later, killing two people who had survived the first attack. The Washington Postfirst reportedthe strike on the survivors.

In previous briefings with lawmakers, Pentagon officials rationalized that the second strike was necessary because the two men clinging to their demolished ship were trying to radio for backup, or for another vessel to collect the drugs,CNN and other outletshave reported. However, Bradley revealed during the Dec. 4 briefing that the survivors did not have the means to radio for help, one of the people with knowledge of the briefing confirmed.

More:Who is the US killing in its boat attacks? Hegseth won't say, and lawmakers want answers

The Sept. 2 strike was the first of at least 22 known strikes by the Trump administration on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 87 people. It marked the beginning of a new policy of killing suspected drug traffickers that has come under fire from critics who say it is illegal and needlessly inhumane. Critics say the Trump administration cannot carry out such strikes without formally declaring war.

The strikes have not been approved by Congress. The boats hit were thousands of miles from trafficking routes for fentanyl, which flows into the U.S. from Mexico. Bradley told lawmakers that the vessel struck Sept. 2 was headed to Suriname on South America's east coast, according tonews reports.

"Since the Department of War began striking these vessels, we have consistently said that our intelligence did indeed confirm these boats were trafficking narcotics destined for America," Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement to USA TODAY. "That same intelligence also confirms that the individuals involved in these drug operations were narco-terrorists, and we stand by that assessment."

"Every Presidentially directed strike conducted against these Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTOs) is taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and to protect the American homeland from narco-terrorism. These strikes send (a clear) message directly to the narco-terrorists: you will find no safe harbor if you continue to poison our people with deadly drugs."

Boat crews were low-level 'foot soldiers'

In decades past, the U.S. treated drug trafficking as a law enforcement issue, and the Coast Guard was assigned to interdict boats carrying drugs, issuing arrests and seizing contraband.

James Saenz, who served as the Pentagon's deputy secretary for counternarcotics and stabilization during the Biden administration, said that during his tenure, the department did not have the intelligence network in place to pick up a detailed profile of the people aboard drug boats like those targeted in recent months.

"If we wanted to know the crew identities, it would take significant effort and a lot of time before we would be able to develop that much information with confidence," he said.

"Leaders (of drug cartels) and people with unique skills are not the ones riding these boats," he said. "It's traditionally low-level foot soldiers" on board.

More:Trump says Venezuela sends US lethal drugs, but data tells different story

The Trump administration has painted its campaign of killing suspected drug traffickers as a new War on Terror, comparing the toll of deadly drugs to the threat posed by terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. PresidentDonald Trumpdesignatedeight Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in February.Experts have told USA TODAYthat designation is primarily an economic tool and does not give the administration additional authority to target affiliated people with military force.

The Pentagon said in a notice to some lawmakers this fall that the president determined the U.S. isin a "non-international armed conflict"with drug cartels, whose actions are an "armed attack" against the country.

Critics, including lawyers and former military officials, have said that the comparison does not hold water.

"This is summary execution," said Wes Bryant, a former senior Pentagon adviser on mitigating civilian harm during military operations. "Somewhere in the chain, someone knows that this is either blatantly illegal or somewhere near illegal."

Bryant formerly headed the Pentagon's Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, whichworked to improvethe military's procedures for minimizing and reporting civilian casualties. The Trump administrationdismantled itin the spring.

When the Trump administration launched its bombing campaign againstHouthi forces in Yemensoon after, it became clear that the Pentagon's threshold of tolerance for civilian deaths had been drastically raised, Bryant said. At least 238 civilians, including 24 children, were killed in the less-than-two-month operation, according to theYemen Data Project.

"Everything that the U.S. had been working towards – I had been working towards – in hand with special operations command, a lot of that was thrown out the window," Bryant said.

Bryant, a retired Air Force master sergeant who worked with special operations on counterterrorism missions during the War on Terror, said the boat strikes had further entrenched the administration's disregard of civilian life. It would be hard to confirm the identity of a couple of individuals, let alone 11 people on a boat, he said.

"This is so severe (that) at this point, the Trump administration needs to release the names of every single person," he said.

Building a 'pattern of life'

Mark McCurley, a retired Air Force pilot who flew many drone missions in the Middle East, said the military is likely observing boats traversing the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific using satellites or aircraft to build a "pattern of life." Common routes and travel times for boats that are believed to be carrying drugs could be compiled to "build that picture," he said. The military may be using aircraft to surveil boats as soon as they leave the harbor and then firing on them once they enter international waters, he added.

Establishing a "pattern of life" was essential to building a case that a target was legally justified, said McCurley, who also flew surveillance missions of counternarcotics operations in Latin America in the 1990s.

During the War on Terror, he said, the military would invest significant effort in verifying the "identity and intent" of a potential target.

"The justification is pretty thin," he said. "How is a boat carrying a product to Suriname a direct action against the U.S. or a direct threat to our existence?"

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Deadly boat strike OK due to cartel ties, commander told lawmakers