Granted, it is a few dozen bungled policies ago, but remember when we were blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean as part of the administration’s Operation Dude Bro antidrug strategy? Well, the results are in, and they are sadly predictable. From The Washington Post:
In a recent assessment reviewed by The Washington Post, DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire. In a closed-door briefing last month, Pentagon officials told lawmakers the strikes in international waters off South and Central America had not reduced its purity.
Those weren’t drug boats. The cartels aren’t stupid, they know boats are one of the easiest ways to get intercepted. They build fucking submarines for smuggling drugs, if boats were enough you think they would go to all that effort?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine
Also as the other guy said you don’t cram 6 people on a boat full of drugs. Why would you need the extra people? Are the sharks gonna rob you so you need extra guards? If you’re afraid some rival cartel is gonna intercept you probably want the boat to be lighter so it goes faster and escapes them so less people are better in that case too.
All this means is that most likely those boats were just fishermen or civilians on recreational rides. Oh, and another thing. You don’t get the death penalty in the US for drug smuggling so why would those people be killed even if they were drug smugglers?