"We must treat them like the al-Qaeda of the world," Patel said at a Senate hearing, a day after US President Donald Trump said the US military carried out a strike on a second Venezuelan boat in international waters, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
FBI Director Kash Patel stated on Tuesday that drug trafficking organizations should be treated like foreign terrorist groups were after the September 11, 2001, attacks, pledging a years-long campaign against them.
Trump said three men were killed in the strike and that the boat was carrying drugs, although he provided no evidence for that assertion.
"The manhunt after 9/11 took some years, and this is going to be a years-long mission," Patel said.
The Trump administration has provided scant information about a similar strike on September 2, despite demands from members of Congress that the government justify the action. It has alleged that those onboard were members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and said 11 people were killed.
Trump's biggest target: the Tren de Aragua cartel
The Venezuelan government has said none of the people killed in the first strike belonged to Tren de Aragua.The decision to blow up suspected drug vessels instead of seizing them and apprehending their crews is unusual. It evokes memories of the US fight against militant groups like al-Qaeda.
Critics said that the action in international waters was the latest example of Trump testing the limits of the law as he expands the scope of presidential power. The US Constitution requires that Congress, not the president, declare war.
According to a report by NPR, the Tren de Aragua gang was founded in 2014 in the central Venezuelan Tocorón prison, which it had a large control of. From behind bars, the gang ran a zoo, swimming pool, disco, restaurant, and bar. They also ordered robberies, kidnappings, and murders, expanding their crimes to the US.
Patel's comments echoed recent remarks from US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as the administration has sought to explain why it has made major deployments to the southern Caribbean for an anti-narcotics mission.
"A foreign terrorist organization poisoning your people with drugs coming from a drug cartel is no different than al-Qaeda, and they will be treated as such," Hegseth said earlier this month.
