In a series of actions on Friday, the Trump administration significantly ratcheted up tensions with Latin America — and signaled that it was set to dramatically expand its nascent military offensive against so-called “Transnational Criminal Organizations” in the region.
The escalation began overnight, when the military targeted another boat in the Caribbean that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a Friday morning social media post, claimed was involved in drug smuggling and was carrying members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal enterprise. The strike, which killed six people, was the 10th known operation since Sept. 2, and the third this week, following two others in the eastern Pacific off the coast of South America.
So far, at least 43 people that President Donald Trump labeled “narco-terrorists” have perished in these attacks. “We take them out,” Trump said on Fox News, and later joked about how people, most of them desperately poor, are now afraid to fish along certain coastlines.
Without releasing credible evidence to back it up, Trump has claimed that the victims’ vessels were “stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl and other drugs, too.” He said they were “smuggling a deadly weapon poisoning Americans” on behalf of various “terrorist organizations.”
The president’s use of “terrorist” is telling. The designation allows him to treat the victims as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist but that he increasingly seems to want to incite.
The president’s use of “terrorist” is telling. The designation allows him to treat the victims as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist but that he increasingly seems to want to incite.
“The land is next,” Trump said this week, and on Friday it appeared he could be correct. As news of the latest boat strike sunk in, the Pentagon announced that it was moving the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and other warships to Latin America as part of an effort to “degrade and dismantle” drug and criminal enterprises. The Ford, the Washington Post reported, is “the world’s largest aircraft carrier, typically carrying dozens of fighter jets, numerous helicopters and more than 4,000 sailors.”
The prospect of U.S. warships in the Caribbean is chilling, particularly when considered against reports that the administration is considering intensifying efforts for regime change in Venezuela. (The country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was indicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges in 2020.)
But Trump also has his eyes set elsewhere. On Friday afternoon, as the Ford prepared to set sail from Croatia, where it has been stationed, the administration also announced sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, as well as his family and associates. Petro recently criticized the Trump administration’s action in the region, and on Oct. 19 credibly accused Trump of murder in a mid-September strike against a boat that the administration claimed was carrying drugs. Alejandro Carranza, said Petro, was a “lifelong fisherman” and was allegedly in Colombian waters at the time of the attack.
After Petro’s initial accusation, instead of offering legal justification, Trump announced he was cutting off foreign aid to Colombia. Bragging about the killings, the president falsely claimed that every exploded shipping vessel “saves 25,000 American lives.” In the factual world, about 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, mostly by fentanyl, which does not come from Venezuela, Colombia or any South American country, but from China and Mexico. Most of the lethal fentanyl, according to the American Immigration Council, is smuggled into the country by U.S. citizens, over land.
Still, the White House persists in claiming the strikes against vessels in the Caribbean are a matter of self-defense. To make that claim, Trump “determined” that drug cartels like Tren de Aragua are “terrorists.” But officials say Tren de Aragua is not operating in the shipping routes under attack, and that the route Trump and Hegseth are targeting carries cocaine and marijuana to Europe and Africa — not the U.S.
Despite the administration’s arguments, Trump’s military actions are clearly illegal. The White House has argued that the attacks fall under the law of armed conflict (LOAC), which limits methods of warfare and sets out legally required protections for noncombatants and civilians — but only during conflict. The U.S., however, is in no such conflict; the country is not under attack, and Congress has declared no war.
Designating drug cartels as “terrorist organizations” is also factually suspect. Drug cartels exist for profit; all purveyors of illicit drugs are in the business to make money. In contrast, “terrorists” are, by definition, motivated by ideological goals often involving politics or religion — not profit. (Even if they were terrorists, international law would only allow the executive branch to respond through legal methods like freezing assets, trials and imprisonment.)
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According to the New York Times, legal experts on the use of armed force say Trump’s campaign is illegal, pointing to the convention that the military is banned from targeting civilians who are not directly involved in hostilities. Key legal instruments prohibiting extrajudicial killings and murder include the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Statute of the International Criminal Court and customary international humanitarian law. The Trump administration has not publicly offered a legal theory that comports with any of these laws.
Trump and Hegseth’s legal arguments have also been rejected by former lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who have condemned the attacks as unlawful under both domestic and international law. Nevertheless, Hegseth has stated enthusiastically that the military will continue these executions.
In February, Hegseth fired the Judge Advocates General whose job was to assess the legality of military actions. Even if it emerged he deliberately did so to engage in illegal conduct and later claim a “mistake of law” defense, such a maneuver won’t save him. In its article “U.S. Servicemembers’ Exposure to Criminal Liability for Lethal Strikes on Narcoterrorists,” Just Security lays out the case under the Manual for Courts-Martial and Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, concluding of the Venezuela strikes that:
Despite the clear absence of an “imminent threat of death or serious injury” or “grave threat to life,” the U.S. Coast Guard did not interdict the alleged criminal narcotrafficking in the way this conduct has been historically (and recently) approached. These suspected criminals were not arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced through a regular course of criminal procedure and neutral adjudication in a court. They were killed extrajudicially for conduct that could not be plausibly labeled a military attack, use of force, or even threat of imminent harm to anyone in the United States or any other nation, and despite the opportunity and ability to use less-than-lethal force to stop the boats.
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An extrajudicial killing, premeditated and without justification or excuse and without the legal authority tied to an armed conflict, is properly called “murder.” And murder is still a crime for those in uniform who executed the strike even if their targets are dangerous criminals, and even if servicemembers were commanded to do so by their superiors, including the President of the United States.
Under this analysis, “every officer in the chain of command who… directed downward the initial order from the President or Secretary of Defense” would likely fall within the meaning of traditional accomplice liability, and could be charged for murder under Article 118.
Even if a corrupt Supreme Court gave Trump criminal immunity for murder — which, despite its ruling in Trump v. United States, remains an unsettled question — someone should let Hegseth know that immunity does not extend to him, or to other service members piloting the drones or firing the missiles. These orders are obviously illegal, and they trigger service members’ obligations to refuse them.
When this period of insanity ends, those who follow such orders could expect to follow Hegseth to court martial. In the meantime, the air strikes and killings will doubtless continue — with even more escalations likely.
