UNCONFIRMED: this account rests on The Intercept's reporting from two anonymous people who attended the briefing, and it has not been independently confirmed by another outlet.
The Intercept reported on June 10, 2026 that Rear Adm. Brian H. Bennett, who oversees special operations for the Pentagon's Joint Staff, was asked at a classified briefing on Capitol Hill in fall 2025 whether any of the people killed in the September 2, 2025 U.S. boat strike could have been victims of human trafficking. “They could be,” Bennett replied, according to two people present at the briefing. The account rests on those anonymous sources and has not been independently confirmed. The Joint Staff said Bennett was unavailable and had “Nothing further to add”; Special Operations Command said it was unaware of any allegations that trafficking victims were killed.
The strike killed 11 people aboard a go-fast boat that, according to The Intercept, left San Juan de Unare in Venezuela's Sucre state on the night of September 1. The men came from that town or nearby Güiria, on the Paria peninsula. A 2020 report on Caribbean trafficking cited by The Intercept found Venezuela was “the greatest supplier of trafficking victims to Trinidad and Tobago” and that 43 percent of those trafficked there travel from Sucre. Six current and former officials told The Intercept the boat may have had cocaine aboard but that drug trafficking was not the sole purpose of the voyage. “No one would smuggle cocaine with 11 people on board their drug-running boat,” one said, and retired Coast Guard Rear Adm. William Baumgartner said the number of passengers was an obvious red flag.
The boat was hit, and then struck again in a “double-tap” that killed two survivors. The White House confirmed in December 2025 that the military conducted a second strike, saying Adm. Frank Bradley ordered it and “worked well within his authority and the law,” while denying that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered everyone killed, Roll Call reported. According to The Intercept's sources, the second strike came about 45 minutes after the first.
Officials told The Intercept that JSOC did not positively identify everyone aboard; later briefings described one passenger as a member of a designated terrorist organization and 10 as “DTO affiliates.” Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CBS's “Face the Nation” on December 7, 2025, “I don't think we knew the identities of any of the people in the boat.” Southern Command said every person killed in the campaign was an affiliated member of a designated terrorist organization. The September 2 strike is part of a campaign of more than 60 strikes that has killed over 200 people; only four of those strikes involved boats with six or more people aboard (see U.S. Commanders Watched Two Survivors of the First Boat Strike Cling to the Wreckage for More Than 40 Minutes, Then Killed Them, Trump's Undeclared Boat-Strike Campaign: At Least 231 Dead in 69 Strikes by September, and $4.7 Billion Spent by April).
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version of this entry said a top Pentagon official “admits” and “acknowledged” the victims may have been trafficking victims. The record is a report by The Intercept, citing two anonymous people present at a classified briefing, of a two-word answer to a question; the Joint Staff declined to comment and Special Operations Command said it was unaware of such allegations. The entry now attributes the remark to those sources. It also said the boat departed Güiria; The Intercept reports it left San Juan de Unare, and that the men came from there or from Güiria.