seizure

Dec. 13 (UPI) — U.S. officials unsealed the warrant issued for the seizure of the shadow fleet oil tanker The Skipper, which the U.S. military seized in international waters earlier this week.

A federal magistrate judge with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia signed the seizure warrant on Nov. 26, which U.S. forces presented upon its seizure on Wednesday in the operation led by the Coast Guard.

“As the premier United States Attorney’s office leading efforts to intercept ghost vessels as well as sanctioned products, we remain committed to legally supporting President [Donald] Trump’s efforts to make the world a safer place,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a news release on Friday.

Pirro called the tanker’s seizure an “enforcement action.”

The seizure led Cuban officials to denounce the action as an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism” that is a “serious violation of international law,” The Guardian reported.

“This action is part of the U.S. escalation aimed at hampering Venezuela’s legitimate right to freely use and trade its natural resources with other nations, including the supplies of hydrocarbons to Cuba,” officials with Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said Friday in a statement.

The tanker’s seizure negatively impacts Cuba and “intensifies the United States’ policy of maximum pressure and economic suffocation” against the island nation, the Cuban officials said.

The Skipper’s captain had listed its destination as Cuba’s port of Matanzas, but the vessel offloaded about 50,000 barrels of oil to another ship, which carried that oil to Cuba as The Skipper sailed east toward Asia, according to The New York Times.

About 80% of Venezuelan oil shipments go to China, but Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and former President Hugo Chavez have shipped oil to Cuba for decades.

In exchange for low-cost Venezuelan oil, Cuban officials provide security personnel for Maduro and thousands of medical staff and sports instructors to Venezuela.

Most of the oil sent to Cuba does not stay there and instead is sold to China to help fund the Cuban government, The Times reported.

The vessel is associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and is part of a shadow fleet affiliated with a Russian oligarch.

The vessel was sanctioned by the United States and flying a Guyana flag when it was seized, but Guyana government officials said they have no record of the vessel being registered there.

U.S. officials said they will keep the oil carried by the 1,092-foot tanker, which is being taken to Galveston, Texas.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday linked the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela to the Trump administration’s counterdrug efforts in Latin America as tensions escalate with the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Noem’s assertion, which came during her testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee, provided the Republican administration’s most thorough explanation so far of why it took control of the vessel on Wednesday. Incredibly unusual, the use of U.S. forces to seize a merchant ship was a sharp escalation in the administration’s pressure campaign on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States.

Trump officials added to it Thursday by imposing sanctions on three of Maduro’s nephews. The Venezuelan leader discussed the rising tensions with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. The Kremlin said in a statement that Putin reaffirmed his support for Maduro’s policy of “protecting national interests and sovereignty in the face of growing external pressure.”

Asked to delineate the U.S. Coast Guard’s role in the tanker seizure, Noem called it “a successful operation directed by the president to ensure that we’re pushing back on a regime that is systematically covering and flooding our country with deadly drugs and killing our next generation of Americans.”

Noem went on to lay out the ”lethal doses of cocaine” she said had been kept from entering the U.S. as a result.

Asked Thursday whether U.S. operations in the region were about drugs or oil, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also gave a bifurcated answer, saying the administration was “focused on doing many things in the Western Hemisphere.” She noted that such seizures could continue, arguing that the commodities being transported were used to fund the illegal drug trade.

“We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narcoterrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,” she said.

The Justice Department had obtained a warrant for the vessel because it had been known for “carrying black market, sanctioned oil,” Leavitt said, adding that “the United States does intend to get the oil” that was onboard the tanker.

Trump told reporters a day earlier at the White House that the tanker “was seized for a very good reason.” Asked what would happen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”

The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, a campaign that is facing growing scrutiny from Congress.

Trump, who has said land attacks are coming soon but has not offered more details, has broadly justified the moves as necessary to stem the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S.

Venezuela’s government said in a statement that the tanker seizure “constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.” Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Kinnard writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Wednesday that the United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela as tensions mount with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Using U.S. forces to seize an oil tanker is incredibly unusual and marks the Trump administration’s latest push to increase pressure on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States. The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

“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.

Trump said “other things are happening,” but did not offer additional details, saying he would speak more about it later.

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 the seizure was conducted under U.S. law enforcement authority.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day. Locked out of global oil markets by U.S. sanctions, the state-owned oil company sells most of its output at a steep discount to refiners in China.

The transactions usually involve a complex network of shadowy intermediaries as sanctions scared away more established traders. 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.

During past negotiations, among the concessions the U.S. has made to Maduro was approval for oil giant Chevron Corp. to resume pumping and exporting Venezuelan oil. The corporation’s activities in the South American country resulted in a financial lifeline for Maduro’s government.

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 Venezuela is “prepared to break the teeth of the North American empire if necessary.”

Maduro, flanked by senior officials, said that only the ruling party can “guarantee peace, stability, and the harmonious development of Venezuela, South America and the Caribbean.”

The seizure comes a day after the U.S. military flew a pair of fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela in what appeared to be the closest that warplanes had come to the South American country’s airspace since the start of the administration’s pressure campaign. Trump has said land attacks are coming soon but has not offered any details on location.

It was not immediately clear who owned the tanker or what national flag it was sailing under. The Coast Guard referred a request for comment to the White House.

Madhani and Toropin write for the Associated Press. AP writer Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

Dec. 6 (UPI) — The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Munro seized more than 10 tons of cocaine from a drug-running vessel south of Mexico in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday.

The seizure from an open-bowed vessel that was equipped with three large outboard motors is the largest drug interdiction done at sea in nearly two decades, CBS News reported.

The interdiction began with a sniper in a helicopter targeting and disabling the drug boat’s motor, which enabled the Munro’s crew to board it and capture its crew and drug cargo.

The mission was carried out as part of the military’s Operation Pacific Viper campaign against drug running on the open sea.

As part of the operation, the Coast Guard “has accelerated counter-narcotics operations across the eastern Pacific and delivered historic results in the fight against narco-terrorists,” Coast Guard officials said Friday in a post on X.

“Our maritime fighting force is leading America’s drug interdiction operations, protecting the homeland and keeping deadly drugs out of American communities,” Coast Guard officials said. “This is where defense of America begins.”

The amount of cocaine seized is capable of causing 7.5 million overdose deaths.

The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard initiated Operation Pacific Viper in August as part of President Donald Trump‘s effort to better protect U.S. citizens against illicit drugs and the cartels that smuggle them into the United States.

The Coast Guard in October reported seizing 100,000 pounds of cocaine in the eastern Pacific during the opening months of Operation Pacific Viper.

In November, the Coast Guard said it had seized more than 500,000 pounds of cocaine during the 2025 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30.

The amount seized during the fiscal year is the most ever taken in a year by the Coast Guard and more than three times its average annual take of 167,000 pounds of the drug.