President Donald Trump has hailed the U.S. military’s missile strikes on suspected drug smuggling boats from Venezuela as a blow against “narcoterrorists” trafficking cocaine and fentanyl. For this, they deserve death.

The sinister imagery conjured by the language, however, is starkly out of step with the picture of typical smuggling crews in the Caribbean painted by accounts from court records, a study of hundreds of federal defendants, and a former prosecutor.

Many drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea are impoverished fishermen hailing from small villages, a profile that lines up with local reports about the crew of the first boat targeted by Trump.

Then there are Trump’s claims about the drugs themselves. If the U.S. strikes are aimed at stopping the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., h

See Full Page