The New York Times – For the third time this month, the United States military attacked a boat in the Caribbean Sea and killed suspected drug smugglers, President Trump announced on social media on Friday.
The attack killed three people aboard the vessel, which was in international waters, he said.
Mr. Trump described them as “narcoterrorists” but did not offer more details, such as their nationality or a specific alleged criminal organization. He also posted a one-minute surveillance video showing a speedboat being blown up.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage en route to poison Americans,” Mr. Trump wrote.
The Coast Guard, with assistance from the Navy, has long treated drug smuggling in the Caribbean as a law enforcement problem, interdicting boats and arresting people for prosecution if suspicions of illicit cargo turn out to be correct.
Mr. Trump has claimed that he can instead treat drug smuggling as an attack on the United States and, as a matter of national self-defense, lawfully order the military to summarily kill drug-running suspects as if they were combatants on a battlefield.
A wide range of specialists in domestic and international law regulating the use of force have argued that Mr. Trump and Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, are giving the military illegal orders and causing Special Operations forces to deliberately target civilians — even if they are criminal suspects — in violation of murder laws …
