The U.S. Coast Guard interdicted a sanctioned vessel off the coast of Venezuela in international waters of the Caribbean Sea today, according to U.S. officials.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed the seizure in a post on social media, saying there was Department of Defense support for the pre-dawn action that was carried out by the Coast Guard. She said the tanker had last made port in Venezuela.
“The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” Noem said in the post. “We will find you, and we will stop you.”
This is the second sanctioned vessel seized by the United States. On December 10, an elite U.S. Coast Guard tactical operations team, with the support of U.S. Navy helicopters, boarded and seized The Skipper, an oil tanker sanctioned for being part of an illicit oil operation involving Venezuela.
Reuters was first to report that a second sanctioned vessel was being seized by the Coast Guard.
President Donald Trump threatened this week to impose a blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers coming in and out of Venezuela, ratcheting up American pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on his social media platform. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.”
Maduro said Venezuela would continue to trade oil and that Trump’s “intention” is regime change. “This will just not happen, never, never, never — Venezuela will never be a colony of anything or anyone, never,” he said.
By LUIS MARINEZ and KATHERINE FAULDERS/ABC News
