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Answer by Jason Wells, founder of National Advancements for Proactive Safety and former special agent:
It genuinely depends on the situation. What most people don’t understand is that the U.S. Coast Guard has the unique position of both being a military organization under the compliance of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice and serving in a federal law enforcement capacity (its jurisdiction being maritime law enforcement). “Posse Comitatus” prohibits the United States military from enforcing laws in our country, so that is why the U.S. Coast Guard is not under the umbrella of direction provided by the Department of Defense (it is under Department of Homeland Security).
So sometimes it needs to wear the “federal agent” hat, and sometimes it needs to wear the “military protector” hat, depending on the situation. I guess that a garden-variety example of each of these two scenarios would be these:
Scenario No. 1: Coast Guard is patrolling federal water routes in the United States and comes upon a boat filled with individuals who have drugs and are wanted by police. The Coast Guard would need to conduct all of the appropriate measures necessary to arrest the suspects, to include confiscating any evidence found on the person or the boat.
Scenario No. 2: While conducting a routine patrol on international waters, the cutter (Coast Guard ship) comes upon a boat filled with individuals who are attempting to smuggle drugs into the United States. In a situation like this, the boat and the drugs are destroyed, and the people are taken into custody or returned to their point of origin. This is known as “the Law of the Sea,” a form of arbitration between countries.
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