Drug boats from Venezuela are mainly moving cocaine to Europe — not fentanyl to the U.S., experts say

President Donald Trump and his Pentagon chief say U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats in waters off Latin America are saving lives by preventing narcotics from reaching America’s shores.

But drug cartels operating vessels in the Caribbean, where roughly 50% of the airstrikes have taken place, are mainly moving cocaine from South America to Europe — not to the United States, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement and military officials as well as narcotics experts. And the deadliest drug of all, fentanyl , is almost exclusively smuggled over land from Mexico, the officials and experts say.

The realities of the drug trade in Latin America call into question part of the administration’s stated rationale for its unprecedented military campaign against suspected