By Jack Phillips

U.S. military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker on the Indian Ocean after it was tracked from the Caribbean Sea, officials announced Tuesday.

The Pentagon stated that U.S. military forces boarded the Bertha vessel overnight without incident, according to a post on X. Video footage included in the post shows military helicopters flying around the vessel.

“Three boats ran and now all three have been captured,” the Department of War stated. “The vessel was operating in defiance of President [Donald] Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to evade. From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it. No other nation has the global reach, endurance, or will to enforce sanctions at this distance.”

The post added that the military would continue to “deny illicit actors and their proxies freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”

The Bertha, which flies under a Cook Islands flag, is linked to Shanghai Legendary Ship Management Company Limited and falls under sanctions imposed in January 2020, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas by U.S. forces in January, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration would move to enforce a quarantine of sanctioned oil tankers operating to and from Venezuela.

For years, Venezuela has been under U.S. sanctions on its oil and has relied on a shadow fleet of tankers to smuggle oil, evading U.S. authorities.

Earlier this month, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said U.S. military forces had boarded the Suezmax tanker Aquila II in the Indian Ocean. That was followed by the seizure of the Veronica III in the same region on Feb. 15.

“International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned actors. By land, air, or sea, our forces will find you and deliver justice,” the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Maduro was brought into the United States to face charges of working with drug cartels to send illicit narcotics into the country. He entered a not guilty plea in a New York federal court last month.

Aside from the Maduro operation, the U.S. military says it has carried out strikes on drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean since September. On Monday, another strike took out a drug boat in the Caribbean, killing three and leaving no American service members injured, according to the U.S. Southern Command.

Trump has signaled his administration may launch land strikes against drug smugglers, including drug cartels operating in Mexico.

“By knocking out those boats, we have dropped drugs, fentanyl, about 33 percent,” the president told Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow on Feb. 10. “Now we’re going to hit them on land. We’re going to hit them very hard on land.”

The administration has designated several Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations alongside transnational gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua.

U.S. intelligence was used in a Mexican government operation that killed the head of the Jalisco New Generation cartel on Sunday, which triggered widespread violence from cartel members in the country.

Reuters contributed to this report.