The conditions were treacherous in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles off the Mexico–Guatemala border. There were gale-force winds and 9-foot seas. It would be dangerous if you were on a boat, nevermind if yours was blown out of the water.
Eight men leapt into those rough seas on December 30 when the U.S. rained down a barrage of munitions, sinking three vessels. They required immediate rescue; chances were slim that they could survive even an hour. In announcing its strike, U.S. Southern Command or SOUTHCOM, said it “immediately notified” the Coast Guard to launch search and rescue protocols to save the men.
But it took the United States Coast Guard almost 45 hours to begin searching the attack zone for survivors, new reporting by Airwars and The Intercept reveals.
Help did not arrive in time. A total of 11 civilians died due to the U.S. attack on December 30 — including the eight who jumped overboard, according to information provided exclusively to The Intercept by SOUTHCOM, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in and around Latin America and the Caribbean. This represents one of the largest single-day death tolls since the U.S. military began targeting alleged drug smuggling boats last September.
“SOUTHCOM doesn’t want these people alive.”
Using open-source flight tracking data, Airwars and The Intercept learned that a Coast Guard plane did not head toward the site of the attack for almost two days. A timeline provided by the Coast Guard confirmed that it was roughly 45 hours before a flight arrived at the search area.
The slow response and lack of rescue craft in the area suggests there was scant interest on the part of the U.S. in saving anyone. It’s part of a pattern of what appear to be imitation rescue missions that since mid-October have not saved a single survivor.
On December 30, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the Coast Guard’s parent agency — the Department of Homeland Security — that SOUTHCOM stood ready to provide them with “specialized maritime capabilities” in support of their missions. But just hours later, it was SOUTHCOM that called on the Coast Guard to conduct the search and rescue mission for the eight men.
The Coast Guard told The Intercept that it received the initial report of people in distress from SOUTHCOM at 1:40 p.m. Pacific time on December 30. (The exact timing of the U.S. strike is not known, but when SOUTHCOM posted about the attack on X the following day it wrote that it had “immediately notified” the Coast Guard).
The survivors jumped into the Pacific approximately 400 nautical miles southwest of Ocos, Guatemala. They faced extreme conditions: 9-foot seas and 40-knot winds, according to Kenneth Wiese, a spokesperson for the Coast Guard Southwest District.
The Coast Guard said it soon began contacting Maritime Rescue Coordination Centers in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica;