The U.S. military stealthily boarded a tanker overnight in the Indian Ocean that was defying President Donald Trump’s established quarantine.
The Department of War said Monday the operation targeted the Aquila II, noting that American forces would always be vigilant and defend the nation, Fox News reported.
“When the @DeptofWar says quarantine, we mean it. Nothing will stop DoW from defending our Homeland — even in oceans halfway around the world,” the department wrote in a social media post.
Overnight, U.S. military forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding on the Aquila II without incident in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility. The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean. It ran, and we followed. The Department of War tracked and hunted this vessel from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean.
No other nation on planet Earth has the capability to enforce its will through any domain. By land, air, or sea, our Armed Forces will find you and deliver justice. You will run out of fuel long before you will outrun us. The Department of War will deny illicit actors and their proxies the ability to defy American power in the global maritime domain.
Video footage showed military members circling the vessel in a helicopter before boarding:
In early January, U.S. forces boarded and seized a Russian-flagged tanker linked to Venezuelan oil in the North Atlantic, and later did the same with a “ghost tanker” in the Caribbean as President Trump continued targeting sanctioned oil ships going to and from Venezuela, per Breitbart News.
“In December, President Trump ordered a ‘total and complete’ blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela as part of his administration’s pressure campaign on Venezuela’s now deposed socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro,” the outlet reported January 21.
Regarding the targeting of the Aquila II, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told Fox, “The successful interdiction of the Aquila II underscores the unmatched reach and resolve of the United States military under President Trump’s and Secretary Hegseth’s leadership.”
“As we’ve publicly stated, our quarantine measures are ironclad, and no vessel defying them can evade justice, whether in the Caribbean or the far reaches of the Indian Ocean. The Department of War will continue to project power across every domain to safeguard our homeland and deter illicit actors worldwide,” Wilson continued.