‘We’re going to kill them’: doubts grow over legality of US strikes in Caribbean

Seated next to each other at a White House event on Thursday, Donald Trump and defence secretary Pete Hegseth promised more lethal attacks off the coasts of Latin America and new ones on land.

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going to kill them. You know, they’re going to be, like, dead,” Trump said.

Hegseth dismissed suggestions the strikes might be illegal, saying: “We know our authorities, they’re locked tight.”

The defence secretary then addressed the cartels: “We will treat you like we have treated al-Qaeda. We will find you. We will map your networks. We will hunt you down and we will kill you.”

But as Trump has rapidly escalated America’s military operations in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific, including the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group on Friday, he is confronting growing criticism that the actions are illegal under both domestic and international law.

So far in the region, the US has launched at least 10 lethal strikes targeting alleged narco-trafficking boats, killing 43 people. Trump has warned that attacks on land will be next.

“There can be no doubt that the US government is engaged in extrajudicial killings at sea. Drug traffickers should be arrested, not executed on the spot,” said Paz Zárate, an international law expert at Chile’s Andrés Bello diplomatic academy.

Trump has said the US is in “armed conflict” with narco-trafficking cartels that he has designated as foreign terrorist organisations, even though declarations of war and authorisations of military force abroad are the purview of Congress.

But Democrats, legal experts, foreign governments and human rights groups have questioned the arguments put forward by the Trump administration.

“You cannot use intentional military force outside an armed conflict zone,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre-Dame. 

Laura Dickinson, a former official in the Pentagon general counsel’s office, said she had “really serious concerns about the legality of the strikes” under both domestic and international law.

Dickinson said in order to stage armed conflict with a non-state actor, a government must demonstrate that its adversary is using weapons of war, controlling territory and committing protracted violence. Trump and Hegseth “really haven’t put forward a basis to show that”.

The administration claims to have intelligence proving the targeted boats were trafficking drugs, but has provided no evidence publicly.

The campaign, which has featured a significant military build-up in the region, is widely seen as an effort to force Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro out of power.

In a move to justify the campaign legally, Trump sent a notification to Congress in late September saying the US was in “armed conflict” with the cartels, which it has designated as foreign terrorist organisations.

The notice, seen by the Financial Times, said the president ordered the defence department “to conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict”. 

Drug traffickers should be arrested, not executed on the spot”

It also said the US was taking these military actions in “self-defence” against groups that have perpetrated an “armed attack” against the US. It refers to those on these boats as “combatants”. Dickinson and Zárate claim the argument is a stretch.

“The label ‘narcoterrorist’ has been created to stretch the concept of self-defence, but this notion requires an armed attack, per the UN charter” said Zárate. “Organised crime and terrorism are not the same.”

“That legal basis requires a showing of an imminent armed attack on the US and they’ve not shown that,” said Dickinson.

Some legal experts also argue that the strikes violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a set of international laws aimed at minimising the brutality of war. The US in 1992 ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, an international treaty that safeguards the right to life. 

In Washington, Democrats have led the charge in questioning the legality of US military strikes off the coasts of Latin America.  

Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate armed services committee, said earlier this month that Trump was waging “secret wars against anyone he chooses”.

“Congress alone has the constitutional power to decide when America goes to war,” he added.

Democratic senator Adam Schiff, who is one of Trump’s top political foes, spoke about one of the latest strikes. “Once again, there is no detail on who was killed or why . . . Congress must stop America from being dragged into another war,” he said. 

Last week, Democratic lawmakers forced a vote on a measure to halt the strikes without congressional authorisation that was ultimately blocked due to the opposition of most Republicans.

Two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul, voted in favour of the resolution, signalling some unease within Trump’s own camp.

Republican senators including Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have also expressed some reservations. Still, on Thursday, James Risch, the Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, said there were no plans “at this time” to hold hearings about the operation.

Trump’s escalation has drawn rebukes in some Latin American countries that have traditionally been US security allies on counter-narcotics policy.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Thursday that “obviously, we do not agree. There are international laws for how to operate against presumed illegal transport of drugs or arms in international waters”.

She added that her government has expressed this to the US. 

Meanwhile Colombian President Gustavo Petro — who was sanctioned by the US on Friday — described the strikes in the eastern Pacific on Thursday as “murder”.

“Whether in the Caribbean or the Pacific, the US government’s strategy breaks the norms of international law,” he said.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leader of Latin America’s biggest nation Brazil, said on Friday that “it’s much better that the United States talks to the police forces of other countries . . . for us to act jointly”.

“Because if this fashion catches on, everyone will think they can invade someone else’s territory to do what they want.”

Additional reporting by Michael Stott