No matter how you look at it, the president of the United States is directing the US military to commit murder with each bombing of civilians on the high seas. Domestic law says so. International law says so. Morality says so.
Since September, the Trump administration has killed at least 87 people in strikes on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, claiming to target drug traffickers. Many members of Congress have only begun to sound the alarm in recent weeks, focusing on a particular “double-tap” strike that killed defenseless survivors. Yet, the scandal should not only be over one strike. All the strikes are murder. The whole campaign is a scandal that Congress has a responsibility to stop.
The administration is pumping out a myriad of myths and false claims in an attempt to mislead the public and justify these extrajudicial killings. Do not be gaslighted: The president has no right to murder.
The first myth that this campaign is built upon is that the president has the authority to order these strikes. Trump has shown a total disregard for the rule of law. “I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war,” he said in October. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.”
This is an outrageous and disturbing statement. The Constitution does not permit the president to “just” kill whomever he wants, and the power to declare war lies solely with Congress — not the executive branch. The president has the limited authority as commander-in-chief under Article II of the Constitution to use force without prior Congressional approval to “repel sudden attacks” in self-defense. Drug trafficking, while harmful, is not a “sudden attack.”
Instead, in his attacks on these boats, the president is also attacking the rule of law. As Republican Senator Rand Paul said in 2013, “A republic that allows its Executive to kill without law is a republic in deep peril.”
Secondly, the Trump administration claims that the US is at war with drug cartels, with many critics of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calling his actions “war crimes.” Yet, the US is not at war. As US Representative Sara Jacobs explained, even if Congress did authorize these strikes, they “would still be illegal under US and international law because we are not in an armed conflict with these cartels. And so, this is just murder.”
Indeed, Congress cannot authorize murder.
Trump cannot simply manufacture a war that does not exist. The victims of these strikes have not attacked the United States, and do not qualify as combatants under international law. As experts, including a former legal counsel at the Pentagon, have made clear, these attacks are categorically not part of an armed conflict.
Those being targeted on these boats are, at most, criminal suspects. As UN experts have emphasized, “International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers.” Blowing up civilian boats that pose no threat of violence to the United States is not war. It’s murder.
The president and many of his allies seem to think that calling someone a “terrorist” (or “narcoterrorist”) means you get to kill them. In an effort to bureaucratize murder and justify these strikes, the Trump administration is invoking the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) label. The Trump administration also invented the term “Designated Terrorist Organization,” which has no legal bearing at all.
These designations do not give the president a license to kill.
There are around 100 FTOs in countries across the world. Even if those targeted on boats are found to be members of an organization on the FTO list, that does not make it legal to bomb them. The US doesn’t bomb the members of FTOs in Ireland or Uzbekistan. That would be — you already know it — murder.
Beyond the issue of legality, such labels are used more broadly to dehumanize the people who are being bombed. We’ve heard it before. It’s as sickening and ludicrous of a justification here in the Western hemisphere as it is when Israeli government officials use similar terms to justify bombing Palestinians in Gaza.
More alarming still, the administration has provided zero evidence that many of the victims of these strikes were engaged in drug trafficking. It’s noteworthy that one of the few documented rescued survivors was immediately released rather than prosecuted. Instead, as was revealed in a congressional briefing, the Trump administration doesn’t even know who they are killing.
The little information released about the victims reveals them as beloved members of families and communities. One family is launching a formal human rights complaint. In November, the Associated Press published the first comprehensive report on victims Robert Sánchez, Luis Martínez, Dushak Milovcic, and Juan Carlos Fuentes as reporter Regina Garcia Cano spoke to the communities who mourn their deaths. It’s unclear whether the US military knew their identities before taking aim. In any case, it is critical to recognize that US-backed drug operations have a history of killing innocent civilians, including pregnant mothers in a water taxi in Honduras in 2011.
Ultimately, regardless of the victims’ activities, the punishment for drug trafficking is not summary execution. Using lethal force to kill criminal suspects is a moral outrage and an affront to justice and human rights.
No one should lose sight of this: Like anyone else, the victims of US strikes deserve the presumption of innocence, the right to due process, and, fundamentally, the right to life.
Lastly, such killing is not only illegal and immoral, but it also protects no one. Contrary to the administration’s claims, these strikes are doing nothing to keep drugs out of the US or support the American people. It is well-documented that Venezuela is not a significant origin of drugs in the United States, and that the vast majority of fentanyl enters the US through legal ports of entry. Often, the targeted boats are not even heading to the US in the first place.
Even if significant amounts of drugs were being trafficked into the US by sea, bombing boats is an entirely ineffective way of stopping them. As drug policy expert Sanho Tree has explained, attacking boats at sea only leads traffickers to shift tactics and could instead even bolster the overall flow of drugs.
Further, bombing boats does not begin to address the drug addiction epidemic in the US. Public health issues need public health solutions. Yet all the while, this administration has been gutting federal programs for overdose prevention and addiction treatment. The president has chosen to reverse public health progress in favor of an extremely expensive, ineffective, illegal, and immoral military approach: murder.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s military escalation is not helping the American people, nor the Venezuelan people. Threatened by the US, President Nicolás Maduro is currently tightening his authoritarian grip.
Amid the torrent of misinformation emanating from the White House, we in civil society are caught in a cycle of catching up, reacting, and responding. It’s imperative that we confront these myths, reclaim public morality, and sound the alarm over the violation of the right to life.
As Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd writes in his book Perfect Victims, “Often the impulse to debunk myths … leads us to forget that propaganda is, by design, a diversion. ‘Even if’ does not forget this fact; ‘even if’ is a sobering refrain.”
In the face of lies, we can’t afford to lose sight of the more fundamental truth that all human lives have inherent worth and value. Even if all the myths were true, the fact remains: All human life is immeasurably valuable and not expendable at a politician’s whim.
We all have the responsibility to hold fast to this truth, and representatives in Congress have a responsibility to stop a blatantly immoral campaign. Lawmakers in both chambers have introduced measures under the 1973 War Powers Resolution to put an end to the strikes and prevent war with Venezuela. The most current efforts in the House and Senate are bipartisan and soon to be voted on. Congress is also beginning to stand up legislation that blocks military action using Congress’s power of the purse. As the dust settles on Secretary Hegseth’s scandal, Congress must follow through.
As Trump threatens to further escalate lawless killing in Latin America, it is more urgent and essential than ever for legislators to act to reassert Congress’s authority — not only to rein in this dangerous abuse through military force, but also to protect life and prevent more people from being needlessly and lawlessly murdered in the American people’s name.