The Coast Guard lowered its drug target three times. It never hit it.
Summary
The Coast Guard is the lead federal agency for stopping drug traffickers in U.S. waters, and GAO has tracked its performance against that mission for over a decade. Two GAO reports, about 16 months apart, show the same failure from two angles. In September 2024, GAO testified that the Coast Guard hadn't met its primary drug-interdiction target in any of the past 10 years, citing longstanding shortfalls in ships, aircraft, and personnel. In January 2026, GAO's decade-by-decade analysis confirmed it: zero for 10, fiscal years 2015 through 2024, even after the Coast Guard lowered the target three times to make it easier to hit. The same report found a likely reason -- a resource shift toward a different mission that accelerated sharply in the years the miss streak continued.
A target lowered three times, missed every time
The Coast Guard's primary drug-interdiction measure tracks the share of cocaine it removes from small vessels in the maritime transit zone -- the Pacific and Caribbean waters traffickers use to move drugs toward the U.S. found the Coast Guard did not hit that target in any of the 10 fiscal years from 2015 through 2024. It wasn't for lack of adjusting the goal: the Coast Guard lowered the target three times over the period to make it more attainable, and still fell short every year. Over the same decade, the Coast Guard also missed its primary migrant-interdiction target in 6 of the 10 years.
Where the resources actually went
's newer report points to a resource shift as a major cause. Since 2021, unstable conditions in Haiti and Cuba have driven the highest maritime migration to the U.S. in more than 30 years -- almost 70,000 migrants attempted the crossing from fiscal 2022 through 2024 alone. In response, the Coast Guard launched a surge operation in August 2022, still ongoing as of November 2025, redirecting cutters and aircraft from other missions nationwide. From fiscal 2021 through 2023, migrant-interdiction operational hours rose 66% -- while drug-interdiction hours fell 62% over the same span. Migrant-interdiction hours have exceeded drug-interdiction hours every year since 2022, reversing the pattern that held from 2015 through 2021.
View data as table
| Migrant interdiction: percent increase, FY2021-2023 | 66% |
|---|---|
| Drug interdiction: percent decrease, FY2021-2023 | 62% |
The tradeoff produced results on the migrant side: the Coast Guard interdicted about 12,500 of 34,000 known migrants -- about 37% of the flow -- in each of fiscal 2022 and 2023, six times its fiscal 2020 total. In fiscal 2024 alone, the Coast Guard estimated spending about $2.6 billion combined on drug and migrant interdiction, roughly a quarter of its entire operating budget across all 11 statutory missions -- everything from search and rescue to fisheries enforcement.
View data as table
| Drug + migrant interdiction | 2.6 |
|---|---|
| Other 9 statutory missions combined | 7.4 |
The underlying problems were already flagged -- and mostly still open
None of this was a surprise to . Across 36 reports issued from 2010 through 2024, made 105 recommendations related to the Coast Guard's drug-interdiction challenges; as of September 2024, only 46 had been implemented. Thirty-four of those recommendations addressed workforce problems specifically -- 28 remained unaddressed. Since October 2023, the Coast Guard has reported a nearly 10% shortfall in enlisted personnel, forcing it to pull several cutters out of service (three of them Medium Endurance Cutters, a mainstay of drug interdiction) and close boat stations for lack of staff. Its replacement for those aging cutters, the Offshore Patrol Cutter, has already slipped four years -- from a planned fiscal 2021 first delivery to 2025 -- and the Coast Guard projects reduced cutter availability continuing through 2039. The service's overall acquisition portfolio, budgeted at $40 billion, has grown $8.2 billion since fiscal 2018, driven largely by that same cutter program and new helicopters -- both assets the drug-interdiction mission depends on.
View data as table
| Implemented | 46 |
|---|---|
| Not implemented | 59 |
's January 2026 report added two more recommendations, both to : develop migrant-interdiction performance measures that actually work, and build a process for the Coast Guard's migrant task force to capture and share lessons learned. concurred with both -- following a pattern where the department agrees with 's diagnosis far more often than it finishes the fix.
The takeaway
- The Coast Guard missed its own drug-interdiction target every year for a decade, even after making the target easier to hit. It lowered the goal three times from fiscal 2015 through 2024 and still didn't meet it once.
- A resource shift toward migrant interdiction accelerated inside that same decade-long streak. From fiscal 2021 to 2023, migrant-interdiction hours rose 66% while drug-interdiction hours fell 62% -- and combined, the two missions now eat roughly a quarter of the Coast Guard's entire operating budget.
- Most of the fixes has already identified remain undone. 59 of 105 drug-interdiction-related recommendations were unimplemented as of September 2024, including 28 of 34 addressing the workforce shortfalls that keep cutters docked and boat stations closed.
Findings on recommendation-implementation status, workforce shortfalls, and the Offshore Patrol Cutter acquisition delay are from -24-107785, 'Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Address Persistent Challenges Hindering Efforts to Counter Illicit Maritime Drug Smuggling' (September 19, 2024), read directly in full via an archived copy after the current gao.gov asset URL blocked direct access. Findings on the decade-long performance-target record, the operational-hours resource shift, and the FY2024 budget share are from -26-107440, 'Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Improve Maritime Interdictions' (January 13, 2026), read directly in full. The two reports examine the same persistent performance gap about 16 months apart -- the first flagging the 10-year miss streak from the asset/workforce angle, the second confirming it with a full decade of data and tracing it partly to the resource tradeoff with migrant interdiction.
Sources(2) ▾
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Address Persistent Challenges Hindering Efforts to Counter Illicit Maritime Drug Smuggling (2024-09-19) — -24-107785, testimony of Heather MacLeod before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries, Climate Change, and Manufacturing, summarizing 36 prior reports (April 2010-June 2024) on Coast Guard drug-interdiction challenges -- the asset/acquisition/workforce facet. Distinct from doc-gao26-107440 (the performance-target and mission-tradeoff facet, published about 16 months later). Direct gao.gov PDF fetch returns HTTP 403; fetched via an existing Wayback capture. gao.gov · original document
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Improve Maritime Interdictions (2026-01-13) — -26-107440, a report to congressional requesters examining 10 years (FY2015-2024) of Coast Guard drug- and migrant-interdiction performance and how the migrant-interdiction surge since August 2022 affected other missions. Published about 16 months after doc-gao24-107785, providing the decade-long performance-data confirmation of the persistent target-miss pattern that report had already flagged, plus new resource-tradeoff evidence. Fetched directly from files.gao.gov (HTTP 200); direct gao.gov PDF asset returns HTTP 403. gao.gov · original document
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The Coast Guard is the lead federal agency for interdicting drug traffickers in U.S. waters, coordinating with the Pentagon and other agencies through joint task forces to stop cocaine and fentanyl before they reach shore. In September 2024⧉, testified that the service hadn't met its primary drug-interdiction performance target in any of the past 10 fiscal years, pointing to longstanding problems with its ships, aircraft, and staffing. In January 2026⧉ -- about 16 months later -- 's full decade-by-decade analysis confirmed the streak and traced it partly to where the Coast Guard's resources actually went.