President Donald Trump has expanded his drug war beyond the Caribbean with an attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean that his administration charges was carrying narcotics — and said Wednesday he was “totally prepared” to escalate the situation even further with land attacks.

“There are very few boats traveling on the water. So now they’ll come in by land to a lesser extent and they will be hit on land,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land. And they haven’t experienced that yet, but now we’re totally prepared to do that.“

Trump — whose deadly strikes in international waters have been described by critics as “extrajudicial killings” — said he had the authority to do so because it’s a national security issue.

“We have legal authority,” he said. “This is a national security problem. They killed 300,000 people last year.”

The president did say he would consult Congress before taking such action. Many lawmakers have questioned if Trump can order such strikes without Congressional approval.

“You cannot have a policy where you just allege someone is guilty of something and then just kill them,” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told Fox News on Wednesday. “If we were to be at war, the constitution says Congress has to vote for a declaration of war.”

Tensions between the United States and countries in South America have risen over Trump’s aggressive military strategy in the Caribbean, which he says is to stop drugs from entering the U.S.

And now he’s taking it even further.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the latest strike, which took place Tuesday, killed two people on board and happened in the Eastern Pacific in international waters. The vessel was off the coast of Colombia, a defense official told CBS News.

“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth wrote in a post on social media.

“There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”

Hegseth included video surveillance that showed the boat being struck and exploding. It is the eight such attack. The seven previous strikes targeted vessels in the Caribbean, where the Trump administration says it is blowing up drug boats coming out of Venezuela, run by authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro.

The move is a “clear escalation” of President Trump’s anti-drug campaign, José Enrique Arrioja, senior director of policy at Americas Society/ Council of the Americas, in New York, told the Miami Herald.

The strike came after President Trump announced the United States would stop financial aid to Colombia because of its drug policy, upending America’s relationship with a country that has been one of its closest allies in South America. Colombia is the recipient of the largest amount of U.S. aid to any country in Latin America.

The president, however, is facing questions about the legality of his strikes, which have now killed at least 34 people. Two survivors from a previous strike were sent back to Colombia and Ecuador, respectively. And his administration has yet to provide Congress any evidence the people killed were trafficking drugs.

Additionally, Democrats on Capitol Hill want to hear from Admiral Alvin Holsey, who is leaving his job as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, two years early over reports of conflict with Hegseth over the attacks.

“The U.S. is now opening a second maritime war front that may dilute, distract its focus from its campaign against Maduro’s regime, while making more prominent the intention of preventing illicit drugs from reaching American consumers from Colombian ports,” Arrioja said.

“In broader terms, the U.S. is effectively playing the role of the region’s policeman, sending a clear message to the international community about its renewed commitment to the hemisphere. These are only the first steps in a strategy that may intensify in the weeks to come,” he added.

The Trump administration claims the vessels pose a direct threat to U.S. national security and has characterized the strikes as lawful military actions under his executive authority.

But Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of committing “murder” after American forces fired last week at a boat off Venezuela that he said belonged to a “humble family.”

“U.S. government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Petro wrote Saturday on X. “Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to drug trafficking and his daily activity was fishing. The Colombian boat was adrift and had a distress signal on.”

Trump, in return, called Petro an “illegal drug leader” as tensions escalated between the two leaders.

The president took it even further on Wednesday when he called Petro “a thug and a bad guy.” He threatened the Colombian president that he may be next.

“He’s hurt his country very badly,” Trump said. “They do it very poorly, Colombia. They make cocaine. They have cocaine factories. They grow all sorts of crap that’s drugs. Bad drugs coming into the United States goes generally through Mexico, and he better watch it, or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country.”

The president began his strikes early last month with the launch of the largest U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean in decades. Publicly, Trump talks of the buildup as part of his war on drugs, but experts also believe they are a warning to Venezuela’s Maduro.

The United States has said repeatedly that Maduro — accused of stealing last year’s presidential election in the South American country — is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and has offered a $50 million reward for his capture. The Trump administration has accused Maduro of leading a narco-regime funded by illicit drug money.

The initial phase of the mission included a Marine air-ground task force aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima and two San Antonio-class transport ships, with more than 2,000 Marines prepared for rapid-response missions.

In total, over 4,500 U.S. personnel — Marines and Navy — are operating in the region, supported by a cruiser, several destroyers and a Los Angeles-class attack submarine armed with precision-guided missiles. Ten F-35 stealth fighters are also stationed in Puerto Rico, giving the United States overwhelming air superiority over Venezuela’s aging fleet of Sukhoi Su-30s and F-16s.

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