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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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