CIA drone strike hits dock on Venezuela's coast — first known U.S. attack on Venezuelan soil

On or about Christmas Eve 2025, the Central Intelligence Agency carried out a drone strike on a remote dock on Venezuela's coast. U.S. officials said the facility was believed to be used by Tren de Aragua, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to store narcotics and load them onto vessels. No one was reported on the dock at the time, and the strike caused no fatalities. According to CNN, NBC News, and The Intercept, it was the first known U.S. attack on a target inside Venezuelan territory since the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific began in August 2025.

President Trump first alluded to the strike in a December 26 interview — "Two nights ago we knocked that out ... we hit them very hard" — and on December 29 described "a major explosion in the dock area, where they load the boats up with drugs," while declining to say whether the military or the CIA had carried it out. U.S. Special Operations Command denied involvement and the CIA declined to comment. The strike marked a categorical escalation beyond the dozens of at-sea "drug boat" strikes already conducted under the campaign to pressure Nicolás Maduro's government, extending unilateral, self-authorized lethal force onto the soil of a sovereign state.

The Standing records this as an extrajudicial action and an instance of executive overreach: an armed strike carried out on the president's own authority, against a target the administration alone designated as criminal, with no charge, no judicial process, and no congressional authorization for the use of force against Venezuela. That no one was killed distinguishes it from the lethal boat strikes, but the act — a covert military strike inside another country's borders, decided by the executive alone — is distinct in date, location, and method from every strike already in the archive.