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Trump Is a Plague on Latin America
While Simon Bolivar has been right for 200 years, the US is not doomed to act this way forever.
Sep 01, 2026
Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of South America, famously observed, “The United States appear(s) to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” For 200 years, US leaders have never proved him wrong.
In the early 1800s, Bolivar led what is now Venezuela and five other countries to independence from the Spanish Empire. But the United States still refuses to recognize the independence of other countries in the region. Wannabe emperor Donald Trump even refers to Canadian prime minister Mark Carney as a “governor,” as if Canada was merely another US state.
The US-backed despots replacing popular democratic and socialist governments across Latin America today are indeed doing so in the name of liberty, as Bolivar warned. But in practice this means only the liberty of traditional ruling classes to exploit, impoverish and kill their less privileged neighbors, formerly as conquistadors and compradors for the Spanish Empire and now as agents of the US government and transnational corporations.
Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) vowed to “restore American preeminence in the Western hemisphere.” It reiterated the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, demanded “sole source contracts to our companies,” and promised to “push out foreign countries that build infrastructure in the region.”
Then came the most blatant demonstration of what Trump’s new Monroe Doctrine means in practice: the US invasion of Venezuela. On January 3, 2026, US forces bombed targets in Venezuela, stormed Caracas and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Trump has openly declared that the United States would “run” Venezuela and recently claimed that the U.S. had secured the biggest oil deal in world history.
And Venezuela is not the only place where the US is using military force. The “war on drugs” has become a pretext for expanding US military power throughout the region. Since September 2025, the US military has incinerated small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 227 people without providing proof that they committed any crime. US forces are now participating in counternarcotics operations inside Ecuador, while the Trump administration is seeking similar joint military operations in Colombia, Honduras and other countries.
But military force is only one weapon in Washington’s arsenal. Trump has also cajoled, threatened and encouraged people throughout Latin America to elect extreme right-wing authoritarian presidents in his own image. Before Argentina’s 2025 midterm elections, Trump offered Javier Milei’s far-right government a $20 billion currency lifeline and backed another $20 billion in financing, while warning that US generosity depended on Milei’s political success. After Milei’s party won, Trump boasted, “He had a lot of help from us.”
Across the continent—from Colombia and Peru to Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia and Panama—there has been a stark reversal of the region's progressive pink tide that brought hope for a more independent and socially just Latin America. The only two major powers in Latin America still governed by the left are Mexico and Brazil—and Brazil faces a fiercely contested presidential election in October.
The progressive coalitions that came to power in Latin America had forged impressive grassroots ties between indigenous and rural communities in heavily exploited areas and urban working classes, linking struggles over identity, land and sovereignty with struggles over class and economic justice. But these broad coalitions were fragile, while the economic and institutional power of entrenched oligarchies remained largely intact. Those elites were never going to surrender their wealth and power without a fight.
And that fight is hardly unique to Latin America. In the United States, oligarchs are reacting furiously to the election victories of democratic socialists, who propose real-world solutions to America’s problems that would improve ordinary people’s lives instead of making the rich even richer, as our current system of neoliberal capitalism demands. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the same battle is playing out on a larger and often more brutal scale.
The right has capitalized on genuine voter concerns about crime, drug trafficking, economic hardship and, in some cases, immigration. Promises to eradicate violent crime through harsh crackdowns modeled on El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele resonate with many voters.
Just as Americans who are disillusioned by economic insecurity and the broken promises of the Democrats have turned to Donald Trump and the Republicans as the only alternative on offer within this undemocratic two-party system, elections in Latin America present voters with similarly narrow and deliberately confusing choices that can lead to the election of Trump-allied right-wing governments.
This pattern is also reflected in the news media that frame these choices for voters. Since the 1980s, Latin American broadcast media have become increasingly dominated by a small number of large commercial conglomerates, mostly tied to wealthy, powerful families. Latin America lacks the public broadcasting and community media that balance the dominance of commercial media in other parts of the world, although, as in the United States, there is a small but growing alternative media movement, with outlets like TeleSur, Brasil do Fato, La Jornada and Kawsachun News.
The United States also has a narrow range of dominant corporate media, but Latin America’s media are even more concentrated and responsive to oligarchic interests. The market concentration of Latin American media conglomerates is among the highest in the world, with four transnational companies controlling 89% of the broadcast media across six major countries, while Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has the largest media holdings anywhere. The market power of these huge media conglomerates is a real obstacle to any movement for democracy or socialism.
Another major factor working against progressive forces is direct intervention from the United States. As working people come together to organize coalitions for structural change in Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States pours money into right-wing political movements to counter them.
The US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has spent billions of dollars to interfere in the political systems of countries around the world, especially to organize opposition to governments that won’t take orders from Washington. Allan Weinstein, who helped to create the NED, told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The NED’s annual budget for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2025 was $36.7 million. But the NED spends most of its money in the countries where the US has the least influence, so it spent the largest amounts in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and the most globally in China and Russia.
In countries where the US already has more influence through existing ruling classes and captive corporate media, it protects and promotes its interests through ideologically-crafted NGOs. Some receive direct US funding, while others are funded by corporate sponsors and foundations.
An organization that plays an outsized role in Latin America is the Atlas Network, a sprawling international network that brings together corporate interests, conservative donors and extreme right-wing groups to coordinate their activities. The Atlas Network receives no direct US government funding, but the US does fund many of the NGOs and foundations that Atlas works with to build right-wing coalitions and parties.
Atlas Network was founded in San Francisco in 1981 by Sir Antony Fisher, a British businessman and a colleague of Margaret Thatcher, Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek, who all reportedly approved of his Atlas Network project. Atlas works in the shadows as “a think tank that creates think tanks,” and trains its partners on “how to win the battle for hearts and minds.” It has annual revenue of $28 million and works with more than 500 partner organizations in nearly 100 countries.
Atlas has a long history of connections to powerful corporate interests. In the 1990s it was strongly linked with the tobacco industry, and the UK’s Tobacco Control Research Group reported that Atlas “appears to have played a particular role in helping the tobacco industry oppose tobacco control measures in Latin America.” Atlas also has long-standing links with ExxonMobil and the Charles Koch Foundation.
More recently, the Atlas Network has been linked to Donald Trump, the Brexit campaign in the UK, and to protest movements against left-wing governments in Latin America.
Atlas and its partners set up fake online accounts to boost the #SOSCuba campaign on Twitter during protests in Cuba in 2021, and also ran trolling campaigns during the 2019 coup in Bolivia and elections in Ecuador and Peru. Atlas also worked with the now jailed Argentine right-wing fixer Fernando Cemedo to orchestrate “Gen Z” protests against the Scheinbaum government in Mexico in November 2025.
In Brazil, where agribusiness is gradually destroying the Amazon rainforest, climate science denial is a central part of Atlas’s work. Atlas Network sponsors the annual Liberty Forum, which brings right-wing groups together with the agribusiness industry to plan their strategy and messaging in Brazil. Atlas’s main partner organizing the Liberty Forums is the libertarian Institute for Business Studies, which has close links to the jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro. His son, Flavio, is challenging President Lula in October’s presidential election.
Another influential US ideological export to Latin America is evangelical protestant Christianity, which has grown from 4% of the population 50 years ago to 20-25% today. As in the United States, evangelical Christianity is a political force as much as a religion, leading movements against abortion, homosexuality and liberal, scientific education, and often supporting brutal state violence in the name of law and order.
The spread of evangelical christianity in Latin America was a deliberate Cold War policy launched by the US Information Agency in 1954 as a weapon against communism and later used to counter the growing influence of liberation theology among Catholics.
By the 1980s, Guatemala had its first evangelical president, Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in a 1982 coup and conducted a US-backed genocide against the Mayan indigenous people, particularly the Ixil. Ríos Montt’s evangelical faith helped him cultivate powerful allies among US evangelicals, who raised money for his regime and lobbied Congress to restore US military aid even as evidence of massacres mounted.
Incredibly, evangelical Christianity has kept spreading in Guatemala since the end of the civil war in the 1990s, even among the Ixil themselves. The evangelical religion has become deeply rooted in the Ixil region even as survivors have struggled with the legacy of a genocide carried out under an evangelical dictator.
On a trip to Guatemala, Nicolas met a family in Ixil whose father was beheaded by an army death squad, after being accused of giving food to the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. His widow joined a weaving collective of genocide survivors, working long hours on a back-strap loom to weave the beautiful, intricate geometric designs that Ixil women are famous for. And yet, like many Ixil families in the decades since the genocide, the family had also joined an evangelical church.
It is tragic to see the recent resurgence of right-wing parties and politicians in Latin America and the Caribbean, but indigenous and working people are resisting, and they deserve our solidarity.
The mostly indigenous people of Bolivia have endured two right-wing coups in less than 10 years, but they have learned that when they say “No,” they have the power to down tools, withdraw their labor, block the roads and shut down the system that provides profits to the ruling class. They deserve our support.
The people of Cuba are enduring their worst test since the revolution, as the United States tightens its already deadly blockade, denying them fuel, electricity, medicine and even food. Many are dying of preventable causes at the hands of Trump and the US government. For 68 years, American politicians of both parties have tried and failed to snuff out this dangerous example of a poor country that, until this latest brutal escalation of the blockade, provided better healthcare to its people than the United States does. They too deserve our support.
The people of Brazil are going to the polls, and millions are standing up to Trump’s threats, manipulation by the Atlas Network, hypocritical sermons in evangelical churches, and the sneering arrogance and greed of Bolsonaro and his cronies. They too deserve our support.
In Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Honduras, brave people are already resisting the austerity and abuses of new right-wing rulers, as they have all done many times before. They all deserve our support.
In much of Latin America, the right’s grip on power is tenuous. The recent presidential elections in Colombia and Peru were extraordinarily close and many new right-wing governments face deeply divided parliaments and powerful opposition movements. We might well see a new wave of progressive politicians taking power across the region in less than four years.
For those of us in the United States, our job is to stop our government from interfering. While Simon Bolivar has been right for 200 years, the US is not doomed to act this way forever. It can and must stop exploiting, impoverishing and killing its neighbors.
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'Where Is Congress?' US Kills 4 More Bombing Another Boat in the Caribbean
The strikes have left over 200 people dead "so far without a scintilla of proof narco-trafficking has been affected, just wanton barbarity for shits and giggles," said one attorney.
Aug 26, 2026
The US military continued President Donald Trump's deadly boat bombing campaign against alleged drug traffickers on Monday with its second strike in as many days, bringing the death toll since Sunday to six, with at least 227 people killed overall.
After announcing a Sunday bombing in the Pacific Ocean that killed two, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said on social media Tuesday that under the direction of Cmdr. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, "Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean. Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed four narco-terrorists."
While Trump's boat strikes began last September, Donovan took over SOUTHCOM in February. He said Tuesday that "Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere continues executing precise, lethal operations against the cartels. We will hunt, disrupt, and defeat these narco-terrorist networks. SOUTHCOM is resolved to neutralizing cartel terror and violence throughout the region and into the US homeland."
Critics of the boat bombings and related military action on land in Latin America, including many Democrats in Congress, have condemned the Trump administration's attacks on vessels as "war crimes, murder, or both," but both GOP-controlled chambers have so far failed to pass war powers resolutions to rein in or end the strikes.
Responding to SOUTHCOM's social media post, Amnesty International USA issued its latest denunciation of "this horrific boat strike campaign," and asked, "Where is Congress?"
Looking ahead to the next presidential election or later, David Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute wondered, "What Democrat will promise to prosecute these murderers?"
In addition to being blatantly illegal under US and international law, as various experts around the world have argued, the strikes are seemingly ineffective at stopping the flow of drugs into the United States, according to recent reporting.
After Monday's strike, journalist Alex Horton pointed to his July report with three Washington Post colleagues that the strikes haven't reduced the amount of cocaine entering the country, "but they're prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a closed-door congressional briefing, and interviews with current and former US and foreign officials."
One senior Colombian security official told the newspaper that "there was a dissuasive effect in one type of transportation... So it has forced them to seek out other methods. Taking the drugs out through ports has increased, stockpiling it on large ships."
An Ecuadorian naval intelligence official said that "the business is so extraordinarily profitable that the cartels do not mind paying freight costs that are five or even 10 times higher... They know that while the United States may destroy one speedboat, they will successfully get 10 semisubmersibles—or other speedboats that evade detection—through."
Angelo Guisado, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, similarly highlighted the campaign's ineffectiveness on Wednesday. He called out SOUTHCOM for "delighting in the slaughter of innocents while the world burns," and leaving over 200 people dead "so far without a scintilla of proof narco-trafficking has been affected, just wanton barbarity for shits and giggles."
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Rights Groups Warn Countries to End Complicity in Trump’s High Seas Murder Spree
As the death toll rises, governments "cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the risks" of supporting the US military in the Caribbean and Pacific, said a coalition.
Apr 24, 2026
With the death toll in the Trump administration's bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean hitting at least 180, a global coalition of rights and policy organizations is warning governments that they "cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the risks" of continuing to support the United States' deadly policy in the region, and demanding that countries "stop facilitating extrajudicial killings" carried out by the US military.
The Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) spearheaded the statement now co-signed by at least 125 human rights groups, drug policy organizations, and veterans' groups, warning that just as US military officials and personnel have risked potential criminal liability by taking part in at least 52 boat bombings since September, third countries that are aiding the US in the attacks may be taking similar risks.
"Third states can incur legal responsibility for aiding or assisting another state in their commission of internationally wrongful acts, including extrajudicial killings and crimes against humanity," reads the statement, whose signatories include Amnesty International, Oxfam America, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation. "Forms of cooperation such as intelligence sharing, access to military bases, and the provision of logistical support may meet the threshold for aiding and assisting where they facilitate the identification, tracking, and targeting of vessels."
As El País reported Thursday, a number of countries have confirmed they are cooperating with President Donald Trump's targeting of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which the administration has claimed is aimed at stopping drug trafficking in the region.
The US military has not publicly released evidence that the people it's killed were actually "narco-terrorists" as it's repeatedly claimed; the family members of some of the victims have filed legal complaints, saying their loved ones were not involved in the drug trade.
A small number of victims were identified last year by The Associated Press, which found some were struggling fishermen or other workers who took low-level jobs helping drug traffickers to navigate the Caribbean. Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America has compared the killings, if they have targeted the drug trade at all, to "straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Despite the lack of evidence to back up the administration's claims about the operation, the Dominican Republic has allowed the US to refuel military planes and transport equipment at one of its air bases and its Las Américas International Airport, and the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago expressed support for the boat bombings when they began in September. The island nation has reportedly allowed the transit of military aircraft and the installation of a US radar system for surveillance.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in November that his government would no longer share intelligence on drug trafficking with the US, but he later walked back the threat, saying intelligence would be shared provided it "will be used for seizures without undermining human rights."
Trump also convened a "Shield of the Americas" summit last month to announce the creation of a coalition of 17 countries in the region, including Argentina, Costa Rica, and Paraguay, which will focus on "bilateral and multilateral operations against cartels and terrorist organizations.”
Legal experts have warned that although Trump informed the US Congress last October that the administration views the US as being in an "armed conflict" with Latin American drug cartels, the military has clearly violated international law by targeting defenseless survivors of its boat bombings.
"The United States is not in an armed conflict with anyone in Latin America. That means the people on these boats are civilians. Civilians, including those suspected of smuggling drugs, are not lawful targets," said the ACLU last month.
Experts have said the bombings meet the definition of extrajudicial killings—or simply murder—and one top US military lawyer warned before the operation began that US service members could face legal repercussions for carrying out the attacks at the direction of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Despite the alarm raised by legal experts, "we are witnessing a continuation and a truly worrying normalization of these attacks against vessels," Annie Shiel, US director of CIVIC, told El País on Thursday. “The United States is committing extrajudicial killings or murders, plain and simple.”
The group and its fellow signatories warned states like the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago could also be held legally responsible if they provide aid or assistance to the US when it is committing acts that violate international law.
"All states must immediately cease or refrain from providing any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful killings," reads the statement. "Failure to do so facilitates the continuation of this lawless campaign, undermines the rule of law, and risks incurring legal responsibility under international law."
The groups emphasized that in addition to putting countries at risk for legal liability, governments that facilitate the boat killings are exacerbating harm to their own communities.
"Families awaiting the return of their loved ones may never know what happened to them and have no access to recourse," they said. "Coastal communities have witnessed human remains washing up on shore and fear for their lives when they trade and fish, sowing psychological trauma and undermining livelihoods."
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'A Lot of Words for Murder': US Military Says It Killed 4 in 'Lethal Kinetic Strike' in Caribbean
The latest strike brought the total death toll from the Trump administration's illegal boat bombing spree to at least 163.
Mar 26, 2026
The US military said Wednesday that it killed four people in its latest attack on a vessel accused—without evidence—of smuggling drugs through routes in the Caribbean, bringing the total death toll from the Trump administration's illegal boat bombing spree to at least 163.
The US Southern Command said in a statement posted to social media that as part of an effort to apply "total systemic friction on the cartels," it "conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations." Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote in response, "That's a lot of words for murder."
Human rights organizations, UN experts, and legal scholars have condemned the US boat bombings, which began last September, as flagrant violations of international law. Earlier this month, following a previous US attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, Amnesty International reiterated its position that the strikes "constitute extrajudicial killings, a form of murder."
The boat bombings have continued apace even as they've faded from the headlines amid the Trump administration's illegal war on Iran. The US has carried out nearly 50 separate strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific over the past six months.
As with the war on Iran, which lawmakers did not authorize, Republicans in the US Congress have blocked resolutions aimed at preventing American forces from carrying out additional strikes on vessels in international waters.
Wednesday's bombing came a day after a New York Times investigation found that a strike carried out as part of a joint operation by the US and Ecuadorian militaries "appears to have destroyed a cattle and dairy farm, not a drug trafficking compound," as the Trump administration claimed.
"We are bombing Narco Terrorists on land as well," Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted earlier this month.
US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in response to the Times reporting that "this is deeply abhorrent, and raises questions about the intelligence used to justify the administration's boat strikes in the Caribbean."
"Many of us have warned it is likely innocent people are being killed based on dubious evidence," Beyer added. "Those concerns now appear to be justified."
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'Do Not Get Numb to This': Trump Admin Kills 3 More People in Caribbean
"The illegality is compounding," said one expert. "Every strike takes us farther from the rule of law."
Feb 24, 2026
The ramp-up of deadly boat bombings in the Caribbean since General Francis L. Donovan took over as head of US Southern Command continued on Monday, with three more people killed in a strike on a vessel that the Department of Defense claimed was operated by "Designated Terrorist Organizations."
Donovan took over as commander of US Southern Command on February 5 following the abrupt retirement of Admiral Alvin Hosley, who had reportedly raised concerns about the Pentagon's campaign of striking boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean—a policy that Trump administration officials have insisted is aimed at stopping drug trafficking from Venezuela.
Venezuela plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the drug involved in most overdoses in the US, and the administration has provided no evidence that the dozens of strikes it's carried out since September have actually been aimed at drug trafficking boats.
Even if the targets were involved in transporting illicit substances to the US, legal experts say the strikes have violated international law.
Following the attack on Monday, the death toll in the Trump administration's maritime operations in the region since September has reached at least 150, and Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America emphasized that this month, there has been a clear acceleration of boat bombings.
Twenty-five people have been killed in the administration's boat attacks in just 19 days.
"None posed imminent threats," said Isacson. "None faced more than an accusation of guilt for a non-capital crime—'take our word for it.' The illegality is compounding. Every strike takes us farther from the rule of law."
"Do not get numb to this," he added.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Southern Command's killing of three people Monday amounted to "more summary executions."
On Sunday, after another strike that killed three people, the Freedom of the Press Foundation noted that "despite the rising death toll, the government’s legal rationale for these likely illegal attacks remains secret."
"By keeping the legal justifications hidden, the government is sidestepping accountability for what appear to be extrajudicial killings," said Lauren Harper, the group's Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy.
President Donald Trump told Congress in October that the US is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels. At the time, Gregory Corn, a former senior adviser for law-of-war issues for the US Army, said the president was crossing a "major legal line."
The boat bombing campaign led up to the US government's invasion of Venezuela in January and its abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who were brought to the US and charged with drug trafficking. They pleaded not guilty in court last month. Since that military operation, the Trump administration has sought to take control of Venezuela's oil.
Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have spoken out against the boat bombings and have introduced war powers resolutions to stop the US from continuing the campaign and from attacking Venezuela, but so far, the vast majority of GOP lawmakers have voted down the efforts.
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Trump ‘Murder Spree’ Continues With 11 More People Killed in US Boat Strikes
"The strikes are fading from public attention despite their illegality," warned one group. "This normalization poses dangers."
Feb 17, 2026
"No amount of terrorism talk renders this slaughter lawful," said one policy analyst Tuesday after the US Department of Defense announced it had killed 11 people on three boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean—bringing the total number of people killed by the Trump administration in the region to at least 145 as the White House claims to be combating drug trafficking at sea.
The US Southern Command reported that Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted "lethal kinetic strikes" on boats operated by "Designated Terrorist Organizations" that were "engaged in narco-trafficking operations."
Two of the boats were in the eastern Pacific and one was in the Caribbean, and Southern Command reported that they were "transiting along known narco-trafficking routes."
As with the other strikes the Pentagon has conducted since September, the Trump administration did not release evidence of its claim that the boats or passengers were involved in drug trafficking.
In the case of one bombed boat last year, evidence showed it had been headed for Suriname, not the US. Past victims have been identified as fishermen—including one whose family filed a formal legal complaint against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—and a bus driver who had agreed to ferry narcotics, leading one expert to compare the strikes to “straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Legal analysts have stressed over the past five months that when the US government has previously identified drug trafficking vessels in international waters, federal agencies have boarded the boats, confiscated illegal substances, and detained people on board for breaking the law.
The strikes on Monday evening, in contrast, were a continuation of "an extrajudicial killing spree," said history professor Robert Crews.
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) warned Tuesday that with President Donald Trump's intensified threats against Cuba and continued mass deportation and detention campaign at home in the US, "the strikes are fading from public attention despite their illegality."
"This normalization poses dangers: The justifications being used could extend to other victims in other contexts, and elements of the US military appear to be accepting unlawful orders," said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at WOLA, and John Walsh, the group's director for drug policy and the Andes.
Trump informed Congress in October, a month after his administration began bombing vessels in the region, that he viewed the US as being in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels in Latin America including in Venezuela, but international and domestic drug and crime agencies have not identified Venezuela as a major source of drug trafficking to the US—particularly not of fentanyl, which is responsible for a majority of overdoses in the US.
Isacson and Walsh emphasized Tuesday that despite Trump's claims, "there is no congressional authorization for military force against drug traffickers. Under international law, the United States is not engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels—designating groups as foreign terrorist organizations does not confer wartime authorities."
Though the ongoing killings are being largely overshadowed by other news stories in the mainstream press, said Isacson, "February is on track to be the third-deadliest month of illegal US boat strikes, with 1.2 deaths per day so far, and 11 killed just yesterday."
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have introduced war powers resolutions to stop the Trump administration from continuing the boat bombings and attacking Venezuela, but the vast majority of Republican lawmakers have blocked the efforts.
The human rights group Amnesty International, which said in December that Trump's boat strikes "constitute murder," called on Congress to "do more to rein in this administration's lawless actions" and urged the public to put pressure on lawmakers.
"This murder spree," said Amnesty, "is unconscionable and illegal."
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War Crime, Murder, or Both? Dems Demand DOJ Probe Into Hegseth Order to Kill Shipwrecked Sailors
"Giving a general order to kill any survivors constitutes a war crime," wrote Reps. Jamie Raskin and Ted Lieu. "Outside of war, the killing of unarmed, helpless men clinging to wreckage in open water is simply murder."
Dec 22, 2025
Making clear that the Trump administration's "entire Caribbean operation," which has killed more than 100 people in boats that the US military has bombed, "appears to be unlawful," two Democrats on a powerful House committee on Monday called on the Department of Justice to investigate one particular attack that's garnered accusations of a war crime—or murder.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi four weeks after it was reported that in the military's first strike on a boat on September 2, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered service members to "kill everybody"—prompting a second "double-tap" strike to kill two survivors of the initial blast.
A retired general, United Nations experts, and former top military legal advisers are among those who have warned that Hegseth and the service members directly involved in the strike—as well as the other attacks on more than two dozen boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific—may be liable for war crimes or murder.
Raskin and Lieu raised that concern directly to Bondi, writing: "Deliberately targeting incapacitated individuals constitutes a clear violation of the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which expressly forbids attacks on persons rendered helpless by shipwreck. Such conduct would trigger criminal liability under the War Crimes Act if the administration claims it is engaged in armed conflict, or under the federal murder statute if no such conflict exists."
The administration has insisted it is attacking the boats as part of an effort to stop drug trafficking out of Venezuela, and has claimed the US is in an armed conflict with drug cartels there, though international and domestic intelligence agencies have not identified the country as a significant source any drugs that flow into the US. As President Donald Trump has ordered the boat strikes, the administration has also been escalating tensions with Venezuela by seizing oil tankers, claiming to close its airspace, and demanding that President Nicolás Maduro leave power.
Critics from both sides of the aisle in Congress have questioned the claim that the bombed boats were a threat to the US, and Raskin and Lieu noted that the vessel attacked on September 2 in particular appeared to pose no threat, as it was apparently headed to Suriname, "not the United States, at the time it was destroyed."
"Deliberately targeting incapacitated individuals constitutes a clear violation of the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which expressly forbids attacks on persons rendered helpless by shipwreck."
"Congress has never authorized military force against Venezuela; a boat moving towards Suriname does not pose a clear and present danger to the United States; and the classified legal memoranda the Trump administration has offered us to justify the attacks are entirely unpersuasive," wrote the lawmakers.
Raskin and Lieu emphasized that Hegseth's explanations of the September 2 strike in particular have been "shifting and contradictory."
"Secretary Hegseth has variously claimed that he missed the details of the September 2 strike because of the 'fog of war,' and that he actually left the room before any explicit order was given to kill the survivors," they wrote. "Later reporting suggests that he gave a general order to kill all passengers aboard ahead of the strike but delegated the specific order to kill survivors to a subordinate."
The facts that are known about the strike, as well as Hegseth's muddled claims, warrant a DOJ investigation, the Democrats suggested.
"Giving a general order to kill any survivors constitutes a war crime," they wrote. "Similarly, carrying out such an order also constitutes a war crime, and the Manual for Courts-Martial explicitly provides that 'acting pursuant to orders' is no defense 'if the accused knew the orders to be unlawful.' Outside of war, the killing of unarmed, helpless men clinging to wreckage in open water is simply murder. The federal criminal code makes it a felony to commit murder within the 'special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,' which is defined to include the 'high seas.' It is also a federal crime to conspire to commit murder."
Raskin and Lieu also emphasized that two memos from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) "do not—and cannot—provide any legal protection for the secretary’s conduct."
A 2010 OLC memo said the federal murder statute does not apply "when the target of a military strike is an enemy combatant in a congressionally authorized armed conflict," they noted. "In stark contrast, in the case of the Venezuelan boats, Congress has not authorized military force of any kind."
A new classified memo also suggested that “personnel taking part in military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in Latin America would not be exposed to future prosecution," and claimed that "the president’s inherent constitutional authority in an undeclared 'armed conflict' will shield the entire chain of command from criminal liability."
The Democrats wrote, "Experts in criminal law, constitutional law, and the law of armed conflict find this sweeping, unsubstantiated claim implausible, at best."
They also noted that even the author of the George W. Bush administration's infamous "Torture Memo," conservative legal scholar John Woo, has said Hegseth's order on September 2 was clearly against the law.
"Attorney General Bondi, even those who condoned and defended torture in the name of America are saying that the Trump administration has violated both federal law and the law of war," wrote Raskin and Lieu. "We urge you to do your duty as this country’s chief law enforcement officer to investigate the secretary’s apparent and serious violations of federal criminal law."
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UN Experts Say Those Ordering and Carrying Out US Boat Strikes Should Be 'Prosecuted for Homicide'
“US military attacks on alleged drug traffickers at sea," said two human rights experts, "are grave violations of the right to life and the international law of the sea."
Dec 04, 2025
Two United Nations rights experts warned that in numerous ways in recent weeks, the Trump administration's escalation toward Venezuela has violated international law—most recently when President Donald Trump said he had ordered the South American country's airspace closed following a military buildup in the Caribbean Sea.
But the two officials, independent expert on democratic and international order George Katrougalos and Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, reserved their strongest condemnation and warning to the US for the administration's repeated bombings of boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, which have targeted at least 22 boats and killed 83 people since September as the White House has claimed without evidence it is combating drug traffickers.
The strikes, said Katrougalos and Saul, "are grave violations of the right to life and the international law of the sea. Those involved in ordering and carrying out these extrajudicial killings must be investigated and prosecuted for homicide.”
Human rights advocates have warned for months that the strikes are extrajudicial killings. Trump has claimed the US is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels in Venezuela—even though the country is not significantly involved in drug trafficking—but Congress has not authorized any military action in the Caribbean.
Typically, the US has approached drug trafficking in the region as a criminal issue, with the Coast Guard and other agencies intercepting boats suspected of carrying illegal substances, arresting those on board, and ensuring they receive due process in accordance with the Constitution.
The Trump administration instead has bombed the boats, with the first operation on September 2 recently the subject of particular concern due to reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued an order for military officers to "kill everybody" on board a vessel, leading a commander to direct a second "double-tap" strike to kill two survivors of the initial blast.
Hegseth and Trump have sought to shift responsibility for the second strike onto Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley, the commander who oversaw the attack under Hegseth's orders. Bradley was scheduled to brief lawmakers Thursday on the incident.
The White House has maintained Bradley had the authority to kill the survivors of the strike and to carry out all the other bombings of boats, even as reporting on the identities of the victims has shown the US has killed civilians including an out-of-work bus driver and a fisherman, and the family of one Colombian man killed in a strike filed a formal complaint accusing Hegseth himself of murder.
The UN experts suggested that everyone involved in ordering the nearly two dozen boat strikes, from Trump and Hegseth to any of the service members who have helped carry out the operations, should be investigated for alleged murder.
After Hegseth defended the September 2 strike earlier this week, Saul emphasized in a social media post that contrary to the defense secretary's rhetoric about how the boat attacks are "protecting" Americans, he is carrying out "state murder of civilians in peacetime, like executing alleged drug traffickers on the streets of New York or DC."
As Common Dreams reported last month, a top military lawyer advised the White House against beginning the boat bombings weeks before the September 2 attack, saying they could expose service members involved in the strikes to legal challenges.
Katrougalos and Saul urged the administration to "refrain from actions that could further aggravate the situation and ensure that any measures taken fully comply with the UN Charter, the Chicago Convention, and relevant rules of customary international law."
They also emphasized that Trump had no authority to declare that Venezuela's airspace was closed last week—an action that many experts feared could portend imminent US strikes in the South American country.
“International law is clear: States have complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above their territory. Any measures that seek to regulate, restrict, or ‘close’ another state’s airspace are in blatant violation of the Chicago Convention,” said the experts. “Unilateral measures that interfere with a state’s territorial domain, including its airspace, risk fully undermining the stability of the region and are seriously undermining Venezuela’s economy."
Saul and Katrougalos further called on the White House not to repeat "the long history of external interventions in Latin America."
“Respect for sovereignty, nonintervention, and the peaceful settlement of disputes," they said, "are essential to preserving international stability and preventing further deterioration of the situation.”
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White House Claims Trump 'Has the Authority to Kill' Survivors of Boat Strikes
One legal expert called the press secretary's remarks "painful" to watch and warned of "how the reported patently illegal orders will affect US service members."
Dec 01, 2025
While continuing to deny that the Pentagon chief ordered those carrying out the first known US military strike on an alleged drug-running boat to "kill everybody" on board, the top White House spokesperson on Monday reiterated the administration's position that President Donald Trump has the authority to take out anyone he deems a "narco-terrorist."
Rights advocates, legal scholars, American lawmakers, and leaders from other countries have condemned the boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, which began on September 2, as murders, and rejected the Trump administration's argument to Congress that the strikes are justified because the United States is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels.
A week after the first bombing, the Intercept reported that people on board survived but were killed in a follow-up attack. The Washington Post provided more details on Friday, including that Adm. Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley ordered a second strike on two survivors to fulfill US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's alleged directive to kill everyone.
CNN also spoke with an unnamed source who confirmed Hegseth's supposed edict—which the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, denied on Monday.
During Monday's press briefing, NBC News White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez noted Trump's "confidence" in Hegseth's claim that he did not give an explicit order to kill everyone on the first vessel, and asked Leavitt, "Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?"
"The latter is true," Leavitt said. She then read a statement that she often referred back to throughout the briefing:
President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war. With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.
"And I would just add one more point," Leavitt continued, "to remind the American public why these lethal strikes are taking place: Because this administration has designated these narco-terrorists as a foreign terrorist organizations, the president has a right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America, and if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate—which is what they are doing."
Asked by Gutierrez to confirm Bradley ordered the second strike, Leavitt did so, saying that "he was well within his right to do so."
Multiple other reporters also inquired about the recent reporting, including Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who said: "You said that the follow-up strike was lawful. What law is it that allows no survivors?"
Leavitt responded: "The strike conducted on September 2 was conducted in self-defense to protect Americans and vital United States interests. The strike was conducted in international waters and in accordance with the law of armed conflict."
Noting that exchange on social media, former Congressman Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, said: "This is not how self-defense works. Everyone understands that self-defense requires an immediate physical threat and proportionality. Repelling a missile attack with a missile is self-defense. Blowing up boats hundreds of miles from US shores is not. This isn't complicated."
"This is not how self-defense works... Repelling a missile attack with a missile is self-defense. Blowing up boats hundreds of miles from US shores is not.
Ryan Goodman, a former Pentagon special counsel who's now a New York University law professor and Just Security coeditor-in-chief, also weighed in. "This has got to be one of [the] most painful responses to watch," he said, also pointing out that "the 'law' Leavitt cites is utterly irrelevant (self-defense is non sequitur, it's not armed conflict, and 'no survivors' is a crime)."
"Part of the pain in watching that response is knowing how the reported patently illegal orders will affect US service members," Goodman added, referring to a new Just Security essay by Mark P. Nevitt, a retired judge advocate general who is now an associate law professor at Emory University.
Notably, Trump suggested last month that Democratic members of Congress who previously served in the US military and intelligence agencies and recently warned service members of their duty not to comply with illegal orders should be hanged. The Pentagon has since threatened to court-martial one of them: Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy captain.
Asked by CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang about Hegseth's reported spoken directive to kill everybody on the boat. Using Trump's preferred term for the Defense Department's leader, she said: "I saw that quoted in a Washington Post story. I would reject that the secretary of war ever said that. However, the president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists... are trafficking illegal drugs toward the United States, he has the authority to kill them, and that's what this administration is doing."
According to a CNN timeline, from September 2 to November 15, at least 22 US boat strikes killed 83 people and left two survivors who were initially taken onto a warship but ultimately returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador.
So far, Congress has failed to advance war powers resolutions intended to stop Trump's boat-bombing spree. However, since the Post reporting, top Democrats on both the US House and Senate Armed Services Committees have promised vigorous oversight.
Following Leavitt's remarks on Monday, the New Republic's Greg Sargent said that "it's doubly relevant that Adm. Bradley is in talks about briefing the House Armed Services Committee," and pointed to his new interview with Congressman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the panel's ranking member.
The congressman told Sargent he will pressure GOP members of the committee, including Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), to "use whatever leverage is available to us to try to get answers," including subpoenaing top civilian and military officials.
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Smith also discussed the reporting during a weekend appearance on MS NOW. Posting a clip of it on social media Monday, he declared that "Americans want to live in a constitutional republic, not an authoritarian dictatorship."
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the chamber's floor Monday that "I don’t think we have ever seen someone so unserious, so childish, so obviously insecure serving as secretary of defense as Pete Hegseth—and that should alarm every single one of us."
Schumer called on Hegseth to release the tapes "that would show exactly what happened during these military strikes," and to "come before the Congress to testify under oath about the nature of his order, the evidence supporting the strikes, and an explanation for what the goals are in Venezuela."
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Legal Experts Accuse Hegseth of 'War Crimes, Murder, or Both' After New Reporting on Boat Strike Order
Two Republican-controlled committees also said they were opening investigations into the defense secretary's alleged order to "kill everybody" aboard a boat in the Caribbean in September—the first of nearly two dozen strikes.
Nov 30, 2025
Former top military lawyers on Saturday said that new reporting on orders personally given by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in early September, when the military struck the first of nearly two dozen boats in the Caribbean, suggests Hegseth has committed "war crimes, murder, or both."
The Former Judge Advocates General (JAGs) Working Group, which includes former officials who served as legal advisers for the military, issued a statement in response to the Washington Post's reporting on the September 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean—the first strike on a vessel in an ongoing operation that the Trump administration has claimed is aimed at stopping drug trafficking.
The Post reported for the first time on the directive Hegseth gave to Special Operations commanders as intelligence analysts reported that their surveillance had confirmed the 11 people aboard the boat were carrying drugs to the US—an alleged crime that, in the past and in accordance with international law, would have prompted US agencies to intercept the vessel, confiscate any illegal substances that were found, and arrest those on board.
But as the Trump administration began its boat bombing campaign, the order Hegseth gave "was to kill everybody," one of the intelligence analysts told the Post.
After the first missile strike, the officials realized that two of the passengers had survived the blast—prompting a Special Operations commander to initiate a second strike to comply with Hegseth's order.
The Former JAGs Working Group, which was established in February in response to Hegseth's firing of Army and Air Force JAGs, said that the dismissal of the military's top legal advisers set the stage for the defense secretary's order and the continued bombing of boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which have now killed more than 80 people.
Hegseth's "systematic dismantling of the military’s legal guardrails" led to the formation of the working group, pointed out the former JAGs. "Had those guardrails been in place, we are confident they would have prevented these crimes."
The working group said Hegseth's order to "kill everybody" could be understood in one of two ways—a demand for the US military to carry out a clear war crime, or for those involved in the operation to commit murder:
If the US military operation to interdict and destroy suspected narcotrafficking vessels is a “non-international armed conflict,” as the Trump administration suggests, orders to “kill everybody,” which can reasonably be regarded as an order to give “no quarter,” and to “double-tap” a target in order to kill survivors, are clearly illegal under international law. In short, they are war crimes.
If the US military operation is not an armed conflict of any kind, these orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed would subject everyone from [the defense secretary] down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under US law for murder.
The Post's reporting comes less than two weeks after NBC News revealed that Senior Judge Advocate General (JAG) Paul Meagher, a Marine colonel at US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami, had spoken out against the plans to begin bombing boats in the Caribbean, specifically warning in August that the operations would make service members liable for extrajudicial killing.
Following the Post's report, Republican-controlled House and Senate committees said they were investigating the allegations regarding Hegseth's order, which the defense secretary dismissed on Friday as "fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting."
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), joined by Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), said they had "directed inquiries to the Department [of Defense]," and would "be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, released a similar statement.
The administration has never publicly released evidence that the dozens of people it's killed in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific were drug traffickers. The Associated Press reported on the identities of some of the victims, finding among them an out-of-work bus driver and a fisherman who had agreed to help ferry narcotics—which led one policy expert to liken the boat-bombing operations to "straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners."
President Donald Trump has told Congress—where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have unsuccessfully sought to block further military action in the Caribbean and Venezuela—that the US is engaged in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels in the South American country. The Former JAGs Working Group suggested that Trump's claims about the operation are immaterial considering Hegeth's reported order for US officers to "kill everybody" on September 2.
"Regardless of whether the US is involved in an armed conflict, law enforcement operations, or any other application of military force, international and domestic US law prohibit the intentional targeting of defenseless persons," said the former military lawyers. "If the Washington Post and CNN reports are true, the two survivors of the September, 2 2025 US attack against a vessel carrying 11 persons were rendered unable to continue their mission when US military forces significantly damaged the vessel carrying them. Under such circumstances, not only does international law prohibit targeting these survivors, but it also requires the attacking force to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners of war. Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options."
The Joint Special Operations Command previously told the White House that the "double-tap" strike was necessary to sink the boat to avoid a "navigation hazard" to other vessels—a claim that Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a Marine Corps veteran, called "patently absurd."
"Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder," Moulton told the Post.
Writer Ramez Naam said Saturday that Hegseth "telegraphed his intent to issue illegal orders the day he fired the JAGs," when he told the press that the legal advisers had been dismissed to avoid “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief."
The former JAGs called on Congress to investigate the new reporting on Hegseth's order "and the American people to oppose any use of the US military that involves the intentional targeting of anyone—enemy combatants, non-combatants, or civilians—rendered hors de combat (“out of the fight”) as a result of their wounds or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them."
"We also advise our fellow citizens that orders like those described above are the kinds of 'patently illegal orders' all military members have a duty to disobey," they said.
The reporting on Hegseth's order came ahead of Trump's latest escalation with Venezuela, with the president claiming he had ordered the airspace above and around the South American country closed—an action Venezuela's government denounced as an "extravagant, illegal, and unjustified aggression" and a "colonialist threat."
While the administration has repeatedly claimed its actions in Venezuela—including the boat strikes, an authorized CIA operation, and discussions about potential strikes inside the country—are aimed at dismantling drug trafficking operations there, US and international intelligence assessments have not pointed to Venezuela as a major source of drugs that enter the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump on Friday announced his plan to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted by a US jury of conspiring to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine and who once said he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
The president publicly stated in 2023 that had he won the 2020 election, he would have taken control of Venezuela's oil reserves.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said the new reporting on Hegseth's order made even clearer that the boat bombings have been "extrajudicial killings."
"Hegseth needs to be held accountable," said the senator. "What’s more, Trump promised the American people no new wars but is now manufacturing this conflict and lying about his motives. This warmongering has got to stop."
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