The US has been striking alleged ‘narcoterrorism’ boats in the Caribbean and east Pacific since September 2025. The Trump administration has been militarising the region, backing like-minded dictators and killing people ever since. They even kidnapped the Venezuelan president.
Now, new reporting suggests a parallel but separate operation carried out in March 2026 killed or kidnapped fisherman near the Galapagos islands. It is not clear if this operation was carried out by the CIA itself or private military contractors in its employ.
According to new reporting from The Washington Post, the CIA was behind the secret attacks on three Ecuadorian fishing boats near the Galápagos Islands that Drop Site contributor Camila Lourdes Galarza first reported on in-depth in our April exposé.
Drop Site uncovered NASA… pic.twitter.com/89E3ibJCIl
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 13, 2026
Either way, a new aspect of Trump’s shadow war in the Americas has been exposed. And yet huge questions remain unanswered.
Three ships are known to have been attacked in January and March 2026. The crew of the ship attacked in January has not been seen since. The crews attacked in March survived. The Washington Post reported:
The eight missing Ecuadorian nationals were aboard a 52-foot longline fishing boat called the Fiorella. The men on two boats that were struck in March, the Negra Francisca Duarte II and the Don Maca, all survived.
Survivors said:
that small quadcopter drones either dropped munitions on the vessels or detonated by crashing into them. The men said they were then taken aboard a nearby ship, hooded and cuffed by armed men, and transported to El Salvador — only to be returned later without explanation to Ecuador.
The New York Times reported on 12 August:
One fishing boat [the January attack] has been lost at sea since January, the U.N. says, with eight people still missing and presumed dead.
The survivors of two other vessels said they came under attack in March by English-speaking assailants wearing matching uniforms with American flag patches, but without any clear insignia to link them to an official government force.
Mysterious private jet overflew boats
Another part of the mystery involves a mysterious American-registered jet which left El Salvador in the direction of the ships on each occasion. It turned off its tracking transponder mid-flight and later disappeared.
Survivors said the plane:
followed and seemingly surveilled them before the strikes.
The NYT analysed:
flight data and found that a maritime patrol plane — based out of a military base in El Salvador — flew in the direction of all three boats in the days before they were attacked. The pilots onboard spoke English with American accents, according to air traffic control communication recordings.
The jet is registered to a UPS postbox in Virginia — the CIA’s backyard — but does not appear on the Pentagon’s public lists of aircraft.
The US authorities have openly gloated over strikes carried out as part of the US war on ‘narco-terrorists’. They even posted ‘snuff’ videos of the strikes. Yet they have offered no comment on the three Galapagos attacks.
Legal NGO, Just Security’s Brian Finucane told the NYT:
It would be one thing if the U.S. didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly. And that’s what makes this even more squirrelly.
Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address? Come on.
The mysterious jet, which was modified with advanced surveillance equipment, flew out of:
Ilopango International Airport, a small airport that was a hub for covert U.S.-backed operations in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
A Trump-kowtowing, fascist Latin America?
El Salvador’s far-right president Nayib Bukele is a close ally of President Donald Trump. Ecuador’s president Daniel Noboa is also a Trump ally. Neither country has commented on the case. The US government has also refused to comment.
The Canary has written extensively on US operations in Latin America. This includes Trump’s plans for an Americas remade as a ‘homeland empire‘ in which the US calls the shots. We also reported Trump’s backing of Latin American leaders who align with his worldview.
A July piece published by Canadian socialist author Naomi Klein, but written by regional experts Verónica Gago and William Callison, does a good job of describing this process.
They asked:
What might an increasingly far-right hemisphere look like?
Their answer?
Modeled on Argentine President Javier Milei and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and unfolding in the shadow of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, it appears violent, chaotic, and yet also coordinated.
The details of this secretive mission in the Pacific are yet to emerge. But the operation is clearly part of a broader strategy in the Americas to consolidate US power through overt and covert means. The US is currently absorbed by its failed war in Iran. But sooner or later Trump’s war machine will turn its full attention back to the western hemisphere.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
