'It's the law of the jungle': Inside Trump's drug war | Firsthand

There was a choice, but it was a grim one.

You could pick your executioner: the Americans or the cartels. Depending on how you chose, you might die from a bullet to the back of the head or a drone strike from the sky. If you were lucky, it would be quick. But for the fishermen plying the waters off Ecuador’s Pacific coast, how to escape death altogether was less clear.

In the villages and towns of Manabí province, they call it the “fishermen’s dilemma”. Defying the drug-smuggling gangs that order them to carry contraband across the ocean invites retribution. Yet obeying them increasingly risks death from above, as Donald Trump’s campaign against maritime narcotics smuggling in the Americas gathers pace.

Overshadowed by his grander, if equally inconclusive, showdown with Iran, the US president’s other war is a murkier affair, waged from the air over the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Since it began last September, the US has acknowledged striking 71 fishing vessels, killing at least 239 people, although no official tally has been maintained.

Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/22/Trumps-other-war-is-unravelling/

#investigation #fishermen #missingatsea #droneattack #documentary

Chapters
00:00 - Intro
00:43 - Meeting 'US drone attack' survivors
03:30 - Jaramijo and the Fiorella mystery
05:08 - 'I want my son back': Relatives of the missing speak out
07:39 - Gangs in Ecuador
08:23 - Retired police officer speaks anonymously
10:06 - Outro

#Ecuador #investigation #trump #video #war