The Mexican Navy introduced on Thursday that it had seized a semi-submersible vessel carrying practically 4 tons of cocaine. The seizure of 179 packages of the drug is the most recent end in an effort to curb maritime trafficking of illicit substances throughout the Pacific Ocean—a difficulty additionally being addressed by america via a series of deadly attacks in the Caribbean towards vessels suspected of carrying medicine.
Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s secretary of safety, reported in a post on X that the interception of the vessel—referred to as a “narco-submarine”—passed off in Mexican waters close to Manzanillo, within the state of Colima. Three folks have been arrested over suspected ties to the cargo.
The Mexican navy (Semar) said that the operation concerned an ocean patrol vessel, two fixed-wing plane, two rotary-wing plane, and two interceptor boats. It additionally acquired help from US Northern Command and the Joint Interagency Job Pressure, which offered intelligence to find the goal at sea.
Harfuch emphasised that this motion provides to different seizures made in the course of the previous week, which have resulted within the confiscation of roughly 10 tons of cocaine. Based on the secretary, “this represents a direct and multimillion-dollar blow to the monetary buildings of organized crime, stopping tens of millions of doses from reaching the streets and defending the security of Mexican households.”
Since at the least final yr, Semar has been monitoring a transnational community that makes use of the routes referred to as La Gorgona and El Desierto to move narcotics and different illicit items from Ecuador and Colombia. The route contains strategic factors such because the Galápagos Islands and Clipperton Island earlier than reaching Mexican shores, together with Punta Tejupán in Michoacán. Based on an investigation published by N+ Focus, the ultimate vacation spot of those shipments is the US market.
Legal organizations use speedboats, submarines, and semi-submersibles, typically do-it-yourself from fiberglass, to evade radar and maritime surveillance programs. Between 2023 and early 2025, monitoring and enforcement operations carried out by Semar resulted within the seizure of greater than 111 tons of cocaine, 223 unlawful maritime vessels, and the arrest of 476 suspected traffickers of Ecuadorian, Mexican, Colombian, and Central American nationalities.
The US authorities has pressured Mexico to accentuate its combat towards drug trafficking. Final yr, the trafficking of artificial medicine like fentanyl was utilized by the Trump administration as justification for imposing tariffs on Mexican imports.
Since then, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has introduced a harder technique towards the cartels, which incorporates elevated surveillance on maritime routes and borders, in addition to the extradition of dozens of these convicted of drug trafficking offenses to america.
For his half, US president Donald Trump launched a marketing campaign of direct confrontation towards organized crime, even in worldwide waters. Based on The New York Times, Trump instructed the Pentagon to make use of army belongings towards Latin American cartels designated as terrorist organizations, representing essentially the most aggressive technique of his administration on this space.
Trump’s decree aimed to ascertain a authorized foundation for conducting each maritime and land army operations in overseas territory, marking a big shift in US safety coverage by assigning to the army capabilities historically reserved for legislation enforcement businesses.
This coverage led to the primary US assault on a vessel that, in accordance with the Trump administration, was transporting medicine from Venezuela to america. That incident occurred on September 2 in worldwide waters of the southern Caribbean Sea and left 11 folks useless, allegedly linked to the Tren de Aragua gang. Since then, dozens of comparable assaults have been recorded within the Caribbean and the Pacific, with an estimated death toll of roughly 145 folks.
This story initially appeared in WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
