In a video posted to Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, crosshairs hover above a black-and-white image of a speedboat cutting through water. Seconds later, the boat explodes into a ball of flames.
The president said defense officials had carried out a strike against 11 “terrorists” from the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, Tuesday morning as part of the administration’s escalating war against drug cartels.
Legal experts and former national security officials have disputed the president’s legal authority to launch extrajudicial killings against suspected drug traffickers, raising consequential questions on both the administration’s growing conflict with Venezuela, and the president’s anti-immigration agenda.
“There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea,” according to Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at research and advocacy group, Washington Office on Latin America. “Even if they had drugs aboard, that’s not a capital offense.”
Lethal force against civilians in international waters “is a war crime if not in self-defense,” according to Isacson. “‘Not yielding to pursuers’ or ‘suspected of carrying drugs’ doesn’t carry a death sentence.”
Even if one were to accept the administration’s framing of the attack, “this action is legally questionable under both U.S. and international law,” according to Juan S. Gonzalez, a former National Security Council official under Joe Biden.
“As it stands, the administration is claiming authority to sink any vessel it ‘deems’ tied to drug trafficking. That’s a slippery slope,” he said. “Without checks, the U.S. risks killing fishermen, migrants, or other civilians… and we’d just have to take the [administration] at its word.”
The Independent has requested comment from the Department of Defense and the White House.
In his Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump claimed officials had “positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists” who were “operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro,” Venezuela’s president.
“And there’s more where that came from,” Trump said from the White House Tuesday.
The White House claims that Maduro directed an “invasion” of gang members into the U.S.
But that contradicts reports from Trump’s own intelligence agencies, which disputed the claims that at the heart of Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.
In January, Trump issued an executive order designating Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, paving the way for his order invoking the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport suspected gang members.
Dozens of Venezuelans were deported from the U.S. to El Salvador’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center beginning March 15, after Trump invoked the centuries-old wartime law to swiftly remove alleged Tren de Aragua members without a chance to challenge the allegations in court.
The Alien Enemies Act grants authority to the president to remove immigrants during a declared war or if there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” but several federal judges and Trump’s own intelligence personnel have disputed that immigration constitutes and “invasion.”
Government officials also admitted in court documents that “many” deported Venezuelans did not have criminal records. Attorneys and family members say their clients and relatives — some of whom were in the country with legal permission and have upcoming court hearings on asylum claims — have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.
Four months after those men were locked in a brutal Salvadoran prison, the Trump administration negotiated their release back to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange.
Then, in a remarkable statement, Trump officials said they “obtained assurances” from Maduro’s government to cooperate with court orders for Venezuelan citizens to return to the U.S., if required to do so — potentially putting them back into a country the Trump administration insisted they should never be inside.
Neither the Alien Enemies Act nor “foreign terrorist organization” designations allow for lethal force.
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has deployed more than 4,000 troops and several guided-missile vessels to waters around Latin America and the Caribbean to combat the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S.
One day before the boat attack, Maduro warned Trump to “watch out” because Secretary of State Marco Rubio “wants to stain your hands with blood.”
Rubio told reporters this week that the administration is “going to wage combat against drug cartels that are flooding American streets and killing Americans.”
“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio said Wednesday.
“Rules of Engagement exist for a reason: to minimize civilian casualties. Destroying a boat at sea without boarding or verifying opens the door to tragedy,” Gonzalez, the former national security official, said.
“Combating drug trafficking is vital. But we must do so lawfully, responsibly, [and] with tools designed for the mission,” he added, calling the administration’s attack “political theater” that won’t combat trafficking or Maduro.
Speaking on Fox News Wednesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he watched the attack “live.”
“We knew exactly who was in that boat, we know exactly what they were doing, and we know exactly who they represented,” Hegseth said.
The attack has “sent a clear signal,” he said. “It’s a new day. It’s a different day.”
Drug traffickers “will face the same fate,” he added.
“The only person who should be worried is Nicolas Maduro,” who Hegseth accused of “running a narco state” and is “involved in types of drug running that have affected the country directly.”
Pressed for evidence against the alleged traffickers, Trump told reporters at the White House that the boat was carrying “massive amounts of drugs.”
“We have tapes of them speaking,” he said Wednesday. “You see the bags of drugs all over the boat … A lot of other people won’t be doing it after watching that tape.”
