More than half of Americans say they are against military strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs out of South America, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday.
The survey shows that 51 percent of Americans oppose the Caribbean strikes, while 29 percent support them. Among Republicans, only 27 percent oppose the strikes and 58 percent support it. Democratic respondents overwhelmingly oppose the strikes, at 76 percent, whereas only 8 percent back them.
The Trump administration has conducted these strikes on alleged “narco-terrorists” amid escalating tensions with Venezuela, though Democrats have questioned the legal justification for the killings.
President Trump has argued that he does not need Congress to approve of the strikes, claiming they are part of “a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” according to a notice, previously obtained by The Hill, that was sent to the national security congressional committees.
Over the course of at least 20 strikes since September, the administration has killed 80 people. The Pentagon also sent the USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S.’s largest aircraft carrier, to Latin American waters near Venezuela to help “dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) and counter narco-terrorism in defense of the Homeland,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on Friday.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that 47 percent of Americans don’t support the U.S. using military force to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, while 21 percent back an overthrow.
Between the two parties, 29 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats don’t want to see Maduro removed from power by U.S. troops, while 39 percent of Republicans and 7 percent of Democrats back military intervention.
At a rally on Thursday, Maduro called for peace from Trump and the United States, two days after launching a “massive deployment” of nearly 200,000 soldiers.
“To unite for the peace of the continent,” Maduro told CNN. “No more endless wars. No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan… Yes peace, yes peace.”
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted Nov. 7-12 and included 1,200 respondents. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.