“Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why?” said Mr. Owens, who told The Herald that he had not voted for Mr. Trump. “For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen — everything was missiles and drones — because there was not a target worth one American life. Now all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?”

The operation was the first known American-led ground mission in Yemen since December 2014, when members of SEAL Team 6 stormed a village in southern Yemen in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by Al Qaeda. That raid ended with the kidnappers killing the journalist and a South African held with him.

Mr. Owens told the newspaper that he was a veteran himself, having served four years in the Navy before joining the Army Reserve in Illinois. Chief Owens’s two half brothers also served in the Navy, one as a member of the SEALs, according to The Herald.

A woman who twice answered the phone at the Owens residence on Sunday and identified herself as Mr. Owens’s wife said he would not be making any statements beyond what he told The Herald.

Shortly after the raid, Trump administration officials called the mission a success, saying that criticisms like those from Senator John McCain of Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who called the mission a failure, dishonored Chief Owens’s memory.

“I know that the mission has a lot of different critics, but it did yield a substantial amount of very important intel and resources that helped save American lives and other lives,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

Pentagon officials, however, have declined to provide any specific examples of how the information on the cellphones, laptop computers and other materials recovered at the site would help track down terrorists. Officials have said it could take weeks or longer to fully analyze the materials.