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war on drugs
Amnesty Condemns US 'Murder' of 6 More People After Latest Trump Boat Bombing
"Human life cannot be left to the mercy of a president’s whim."
Mar 12, 2026
Amnesty International on Wednesday denounced this week's killing of six more people as US forces bombed another boat the Trump administration said—without evidence—was operated by narco-traffickers.
"Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations," US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said Sunday on social media. "Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Six male narco-terrorists were killed during this action."
The US has bombed at least 40 vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since last September, killing at least 156 people, according to the Trump administration.
"Amnesty International strongly condemns these acts and reiterates that they constitute extrajudicial killings, a form of murder, prohibited under international law, and represent a grave affront to the most basic principles of humanity and legality," Amnesty said in a statement. "No circumstances justify the arbitrary deprivation of life."
The boat strikes were fraught from the start. In the first known attack, US forces killed nine people in an initial strike and then two men clinging to the boat's wreckage in a follow-up bombing. Legal experts have debated whether those strikes were a war crime or simply murder, and many argue that all of the boat bombings violate international law.
“The United States cannot claim the right to blow up boats with people on board based solely on suspicions of drug trafficking or other allegedly illicit activities," Amnesty International Americas director Ana Piquer said Wednesday. "The rest of the international community cannot normalize these extrajudicial killings, in which the United States military is judge and executioner."
"No president or military has the right to arbitrarily take life."
"Human life cannot be left to the mercy of a president’s whim," Piquer stressed. "No president or military has the right to arbitrarily take life. The level of dehumanization and cynicism reflected in these acts is deeply alarming and should be of global concern."
"It is urgent to demand accountability and immediately end these types of attacks," she added. "Due to the current acquiescence of the attorney general’s office, Congress must step in with its oversight power and investigate."
In addition to bombing boats—and 10 countries—President Donald Trump launched an invasion of Venezuela to abduct its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, who are jailed in the US awaiting trial for dubious narco-trafficking charges.
Earlier this month, Trump also authorized a joint campaign with Ecuador to combat "narco-terrorists" in which US ground troops have been deployed in the Andean nation.
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Amid Threats of US Attack, Sheinbaum Tells Trump to Get a Grip on Illegal Guns, Drugs
“The cartels are fueled by the United States’ demand for drugs and armed with US weapons, and thanks to the United States, they are able to orchestrate enormous bloodshed and chaos," said Mexico's president.
Mar 09, 2026
Amid months of threats by US leaders to attack drug gangs in Mexico, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum slapped back Monday against President Donald Trump's assertion that her country is the "epicenter" of cartel violence by urging him to stem the flow of illegal arms across the border—and domestic demand for illicit narcotics.
“If the flow of illegal weapons from the United States into Mexico were stopped, these groups wouldn’t have access to this type of high-powered weaponry to carry out their criminal activities,” Sheinabum said during her daily press briefing, citing a 2025 US Department of Justice report showing that approximately 3 in 4 guns used by Mexican criminal organizations were illicitly trafficked across the international border.
“There’s a very important aspect that needs to be addressed, which is reducing drug use in the United States,” she added.
In a separate interview with W Radio, Sheinbaum took aim at Trump's Saturday speech at his so-called "Shield of the Americas" summit with mostly right-wing Latin American leaders, during which he called Mexico the "epicenter of cartel violence" and announced a "brand-new military coalition" to tackle drug gangs.
“The epicenter of cartel violence is not Mexico, it’s the United States,” she said. “The cartels are fueled by the United States’ demand for drugs and armed with US weapons, and thanks to the United States, they are able to orchestrate enormous bloodshed and chaos throughout Latin America.”
In the latest in a series of threats to attack criminal organizations in Mexico—a scenario vehemently opposed by the Mexican government and most Mexicans—Trump said Saturday that allied right-wing Latin American governments have made “a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks.”
Mexicans are wary of US interventions, having lost half their national territory to the United States in an 1846-48 war that two US presidents—Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant—said was waged under false pretext to conquer territory and expand slavery. The US also invaded and briefly occupied the port city of Veracruz in 1914 and launched a punitive invasion targeting the revolutionary Pancho Villa's forces in 1916-17.
Sheinbaum's remarks came after Mexican troops, supported by US intelligence, killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel chief Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes—known as “El Mencho”—during a raid last month. The operation sparked a wave of retaliatory cartel violence in some Mexican states.
Mexico has also arrested hundreds of suspected drug traffickers, destroyed numerous secret narcotics labs, and handed over dozens of alleged cartel criminals to US authorities in recent months.
Last year, the US Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Mexican government against US gun manufacturers, unanimously ruling that Mexico did not plausibly show the companies aided and abetted illegal arms sales.
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Trump's ‘Slaughter at Sea Continues’ as US Military Kills 6 More in Eastern Pacific
"No telling what a military that engages in a monthslong killing spree outside the law might do," said one policy expert.
Mar 09, 2026
With the Trump administration's unprovoked war on Iran spiraling out of control, sending oil prices skyrocketing and leading to war crimes allegations against the US, the public's attention has largely shifted away from the White House's bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean—but the killings of six men on Sunday made clear that the administration has no intention of ending its deadly attacks on boats it claims, without providing evidence, are involved in drug trafficking.
US Southern Command said in a social media post Sunday evening that at the direction of Gen. Francis Donovan, it had struck a vessel "operated by designated terrorist organizations."
The announcement echoed previous communications about lethal boat strikes since last September, claiming that the vessel "was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," but pointing to no evidence the US forces used to make that determination.
The bombing was the 42nd strike carried out by the Trump administration in six months, according to Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America.
The New York Times reported that at least 156 people have now been killed in the boat strikes, while Isacson placed the number at 158. He emphasized that the victims' "guilt for a noncapital crime" remains unknown.
Drug trafficking in the Latin America region has typically been treated as a criminal offense, with US law enforcement agencies sometimes working with the Coast Guard to intercept boats suspected of carrying illicit substances to the US, arresting those on board, and conviscating the drugs.
Under President Donald Trump's second administration, the Department of Defense has insisted boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific pose an imminent threat to the US and that an influx of drugs from Latin America qualifies as an attack on US soil.
The deadly bombings the Pentagon has carried out as a result have led legal experts to accuse Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others involved in the strikes of war crimes and murder.
Trump claimed to Congress in October that the US is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels in Venezuela, but Congress has not authorized attacks on boats or inside Venezuela.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have introduced war powers resolutions to stop the attacks from continuing, but they have been voted down, with the vast majority of Republicans rejecting them. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) joined the GOP in voting down one of the resolutions in the Senate.
A day before the latest strike, Trump met with Latin American leaders at the "Shield of the Americans" summit in the Dominican Republic and urged them to join the United States' fight against drug cartels, calling them an "unacceptable threat to national security."
Forces from the US and Ecuador also joined in carrying out military operations against criminal organizations in the South American country last week.
Although Trump's claims that drugs are being trafficked to the US from Venezuela and that the country's government was participating in the criminal enterprise have underpinned the boat bombings, Venezuela has not been found to be a major source of drugs that arrive in the US. After invading the country in January, the president quickly pivoted to discussions on taking control of Venezuela's vast oil reserves.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, suggested Sunday that Trump's continued boat strikes show the White House is unlikely to be bound by international law as it continues to threaten countries in Latin America, such as Cuba, and carries out its war on Iran.
"The slaughter at sea continues," said Finucane. "No telling what a military that engages in a monthslong killing spree outside the law might do."
On Friday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is scheduled to hold its first-ever hearing on the legality of the US boat strikes, following a push for action from human rights groups.
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