Fact Check: Coast Guard Data Show ~81% of Interdicted Vessels Had Illicit Contraband — Social Posts Reversed the Numbers

Social posts claiming the U.S. Coast Guard found drugs on only 21% (or that 79% were innocent) of suspected trafficking boats stopped near Venezuela are incorrect. The Coast Guard’s letter to Sen. Rand Paul reports 212 interdictions between Sept. 1, 2024, and Oct. 7, 2025; 41 of those vessels had no illicit contraband when interdicted. That equals roughly 19.4% without contraband and about 80.6% with contraband — the reverse of several social-media claims.

The error began with a numerical misreading of the Coast Guard letter and was compounded when some posts flipped the figures entirely. Sen. Paul posted the Coast Guard’s response and wrote that "21 percent of boats stopped off the coast of Venezuela possessed NO drugs," a small rounding difference from the letter’s 19.4% (41 of 212). A later post on Bluesky and subsequent resharing inverted the relationship, asserting that 79% of interdicted boats had no contraband — which is false.

What the Coast Guard letter actually says

1. From September 1, 2024, to October 7, 2025, Coast Guard surface assets interdicted 212 suspected drug-smuggling vessels bound for the United States. Of the 212 interdictions, 41 vessels had no illicit contraband on board when interdicted; 24 of those 41 vessels without contraband did not appear to commit any federal criminal offense.

2. Of the 212 total vessels interdicted during this period, 69 vessels were interdicted in the Caribbean Sea... Of the 69 Caribbean interdictions, 14 vessels were interdicted off the coast of Venezuela. Three of the 14 vessels interdicted near Venezuela had no illicit contraband on board when interdicted, but one of the three violated other U.S. federal criminal statutes.

3. The Coast Guard did not use lethal force against any of the 212 vessels interdicted at sea during this period. The Coast Guard used non-lethal force to warn and/or disable non-compliant vessels suspected of smuggling on 105 occasions during this period.

4–5. Most interdictions (208) occurred in international waters; three were in U.S. territorial waters and one in foreign territorial seas where U.S. enforcement was authorized under a bilateral agreement.

Interpreting the numbers: 41 of 212 interdicted vessels had no illicit contraband (19.4%), while 171 of 212 (80.6%) did. In the Caribbean subset, 14 of 69 interdictions had no contraband (about 20.3%); off Venezuela specifically, 3 of 14 had no contraband, though one of those three violated other U.S. federal statutes.

Why the social posts were wrong

Two mistakes account for the misinformation: a slight rounding/miscalculation in Sen. Paul’s post (reporting 21% instead of the precise 19.4%) and later posts that reversed the figures, claiming 79% had no contraband. The Coast Guard’s data do not support the assertion that most interdicted boats were innocent of carrying illicit contraband.

Bottom line

The Coast Guard’s own figures show roughly 81% of interdicted vessels had illicit contraband and about 19% did not. Social-media claims that 79% of interdicted boats were clean are the result of misreading and in one case flipping the reported numbers. The letter also states that no lethal force was used in these interdictions and that non-lethal measures were applied 105 times.