US upends its role as the high-seas drug police with a military strike on Venezuelan boat

By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN and JOSHUA GOODMAN WASHINGTON AP The U S Coast Guard detects and detains scores of drug-running vessels in the Caribbean every year in its role as the world s drug police on the high seas Now that anti-narcotics mission may look vastly different after a U S military strike on a vessel off Venezuela Trump administration bureaucrats asserted last week that gang members were smuggling drugs bound for America The Trump administration has indicated more military strikes on drug targets could be coming saying it is seeking to wage war on Latin American cartels it accuses of flooding the U S with cocaine fentanyl and other drugs It is facing mounting questions however about the legality of the strike and any such escalation which upends decades of procedures for interdicting suspected drug vessels This really throws a wrench in the huge resources the U S has been making for decades building up a robust legal infrastructure to arrest and prosecute suspected drug operators declared Kendra McSweeney an Ohio State University geographer who has spent years researching the legal infrastructure of U S drug interdictions at sea Citing self-defense and an immediate threat Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted while visiting Latin America last week that drug cartels pose an immediate threat to the United States and that President Donald Trump has a right under exigent circumstances to eliminate imminent threats to the United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a joint news conference with Ecuador s Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld at the Palacio de Carondelet in Quito Ecuador Thursday Sept AP Photo Jacquelyn Martin Pool A U S official familiar with the reasoning also cited self-defense as legal justification for the strike that the administration says killed members of Venezuela s Tren de Aragua gang which has been dubbed a foreign terrorist organization The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation The administration used a similar argument months prior to justify an intense bombing camping against Houthi rebels in Yemen However behind the scenes the justification for strikes against the cartels appears to be far more complex The New York Times released last month that Trump signed a directive to the Pentagon to start using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels That reporting was related to the Venezuela strike according to a U S official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details Touting the strike but no details on how it happened Vice President JD Vance celebrated the strike over the weekend suggesting that the use of force is necessary to protect American families from deadly drugs Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military Vance revealed on X Several Democrats and even certain fellow Republicans criticized Vance s comments Congressional leaders also have pressed for more information on why the administration took the military action The Pentagon has been silent about any details on the strike Military agents have not divulged what system carried it out what weapons were used or how it was determined that the vessel was operated by Tren de Aragua or carrying drugs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated last week that foreign terrorist organizations have been designated we have those agents and it s about keeping the American people safe There s no reason for me to give the community or adversaries any more information than that Pentagon personnel did not respond to direct questions about the legal justification for the strike and whether the military considered itself at war with Venezuelan President Nicol s Maduro s executive Hegseth traveled Monday to Puerto Rico where troops deployed for a training exercise and where the U S is sending F- fighter jets for operations against drug cartels There s no authority for this whatsoever Claire Finkelstein a professor of national shield law at the University of Pennsylvania reported extrajudicial killing would be a better term to describe the strike She sees it as an outgrowth of the two-decade blurring of the lines between law enforcement and armed conflict Related Articles Man accused of trying to assassinate Trump apologizes to expected jurors Hegseth and Caine visit Puerto Rico as US strategies up military operations in the Caribbean Trump note to Epstein that he denies signing is circulated by Congress Pastor Doug Wilson s fringe teachings go mainstream in Trump s Washington Trump celebrates West Point alumni group canceling award ceremony to honor Tom Hanks Following the Sept attacks the U S started designating members of foreign terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida and the Taliban as unlawful combatants making them vulnerable to U S attacks even when not directly engaged in warfare Trump has designated several Latin American cartels including Venezuela s Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations But that in itself does not make a U S strike against suspected members of the group legal Finkelstein noted Congress has not authorized the use of force against Venezuela nor are there any U N resolutions that would justify the U S actions There s no authority for this whatsoever under international law she declared It was not an act of self-defense It was not in the middle of a war There was no imminent threat to the United States A pair of armed Venezuelan planes flew by a U S warship in the Caribbean days after the strike and Trump warned Friday that any future flights would be met with gunfire The strike quite arguably is an act of war against Venezuela and they would potentially be justified in responding with the use of force Finkelstein noted Could you imagine what would happen if their navy was miles off the coast of the U S Turning to the seas during the drug war The search and seizures by sea are a routine feature of America s first forever war the drug war which President Richard Nixon declared in In at the height of Pablo Escobar s Medellin drug cartel Congress passed the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act which defines drug smuggling in international waters as a crime against the United States and gives the U S unique arrest powers Usually personnel stop and board boats arrest the crew and seize any contraband The efforts are led by the U S Coast Guard with advocacy from the Pentagon State Department Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI as well as allies from the U K France Netherlands and across Latin America Now warning operations like the strike will happen again Rubio announced Trump wants to wage war on these groups because they ve been waging war on us for years and no one has responded Under the maritime drug enforcement law new prosecutions were brought in the first nine months of the current fiscal year according to Syracuse University s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse which collects Justice Department content That compares to for all of Since each development involves multiple defendants the actual number of foreigners detained at sea is likely much higher The Coast Guard disclosed last month what it called its largest drug haul on record from multiple interdictions over two months Chosen of those seizures were carried out by a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment aboard a Dutch naval vessel in the Caribbean While no one is sympathetic to the plight of drug dealers the reason we do this through a judicial process in partnership with other nations is so we can collect evidence that allows us to build bigger cases and go after the cartel bosses declared James Story who served as ambassador to Venezuela during the first Trump administration Story who ran the State Department s anti-narcotics bureau in Colombia and Latin America earlier in his career revealed nations have liaisons at a multiagency task force based in the Naval Air Station in Key West Florida where high seas boardings are coordinated Anything that could potentially jeopardize those relationships would make us less effective in the long run he noted Goodman informed from Miami