US Coast Guard boats used as floating prisons to combat drug war, report reveals

The US Coast Guard has the power to detain people at sea. Picture / US Coast Guard Source / Supplied

The US Coast Guard is reportedly using boats as floating prisons to fight the war on drugs, it has been revealed.

The US is deploying ships across the Pacific Ocean to stop the flow of cocaine from South and Central America. It is using cutter ships, or commissioned vessels, to hold suspected smugglers caught at sea.

New York Times reporter Seth Freed Wessler told Public Radio International drug smugglers are taken onboard the US vessels and are sometimes chained to the deck before being shipped back to the US for trial.

Wessler said the suspects can be onboard for weeks and the Coast Guard is allowed to hold them because the smugglers aren't technically under arrest until they reach the US mainland.

According to him, the US Coast Guard has gone deep into the Pacific Ocean to stop the flow of drugs between South America — Colombia, Ecuador — and Central America, where the drugs are dropped off and then often moved north through Mexico.

The smugglers are held on average for 18 days but Wessler mentioned one suspect who was held for 70 because of delays in processing.

They are arrested before being processed in courts in Florida.

Wessler also said US President Donald Trump's chief-of-staff General John Kelly has played a key role in expanding the use of the Coast Guard for catching the smugglers.

"He's called drug smuggling in Central America an existential threat to the United States," he said.

Although some of the drugs are heading to the US, Wessler points out some are headed to Europe and Australia which means the US can't prosecute unless it can prove the drugs were headed to the United States.

"And that's one of the reasons why federal prosecutors prefer to bring these cases to Florida, where that burden of proof is not required," he said.

The US Coast Guard in September seized more than 22,000kg of cocaine and heroin worth an estimated $679.3 million ($985m) in San Diego, California.

The Coast Guard cutter Stratton and a Navy ship off the coast of Central and South America made 25 separate seizures, CBS News reported.

Acting US Attorney Alana Robinson warned drug smugglers authorities were onto them.

"To drug traffickers who may think they are invisible in the middle of what seems to be a vast, empty ocean: you are not alone," she said.

"We are doing everything we can to prevent you from using the high seas as your personal freeway."