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war on drugs
Stop Trump's High Seas Killing Spree
The US must immediately end these boat strikes and take accountability for the harms caused to the victims and their families. And Congress must do its job of conducting oversight to ensure transparent and independent investigations of these strikes.
May 16, 2026
The US military has been carrying out extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Pacific over the past nine months with impunity.
On May 8, the US military struck another boat in the eastern Pacific, killing two people and leaving one survivor. US Southern Command claimed “the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes” and “was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”
According to The Intercept, there have now been 58 such boat strikes since September that have killed at least 193 people. As with the May 8 attack, the names and nationalities of most of these victims remain unknown.
The Trump administration has accused civilian boats of transporting narcotics to the US and says its killing “narco-terrorists.” But the Pentagon has provided no evidence for these claims or any indication that the people killed posed an imminent threat.
The use of unlawful force will become more normalized at home and abroad unless the Trump administration is held accountable for these illegal killings and its blatant abuse of power.
International and US law do not allow the use of the military to kill civilians suspected of crimes. Boat bombing on the high seas is not a legitimate law enforcement operation. Nor is it curbing the flow of drugs into the United States, as President Donald Trump claims, or combating the root causes of drug use.
Even if the boats did carry drugs, the appropriate response would be to lawfully intercept and detain the suspects and afford them due process of law.
In a desperate attempt to provide legal cover for these murders, the Trump administration is asserting that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with unspecified drug cartels—the same kind of broad legal authority invoked by the George W. Bush administration in its post-9/11 “war on terror.”
But there is no armed conflict in the Caribbean or the Pacific. The people on those boats are civilians who are not legitimate military targets. “You just can’t call something war to give yourself war powers,” noted University of Pennsylvania professor Claire Finkelstein.
Legal and human rights experts agree.
Last October, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned the boat strikes. “None of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force against them under international law,” Türk said in his October 31 statement.
Despite the unsubstantiated, fearmongering claims pushed by the Trump administration, investigations have shown that several of those people killed were fishermen trying to make a living for their families. On January 20, the US attacked the Ecuadorian fishing boat La Fiorella. None of the eight fishermen aboard have been seen since.
Survivors have also endured abuse. In two separate Pacific attacks on Ecuadorian fishing boats in March, 36 survivors said they were “abducted and tortured by American forces and taken by boat all the way to El Salvador before being returned to Ecuador,” according to an investigation by Drop Site News.
“They handcuffed us, put hoods over our heads and pushed us around. We were terrified they were going to kill us,” recalled Jhonny Sebastián Palacios, one of the survivors, in an interview with The Guardian.
The US must immediately end these boat strikes and take accountability for the harms caused to the victims and their families. And Congress must do its job of conducting oversight to ensure transparent and independent investigations of these strikes.
The use of unlawful force will become more normalized at home and abroad unless the Trump administration is held accountable for these illegal killings and its blatant abuse of power.
When federal immigration agents killed American citizens earlier this year, we saw all too clearly the risks of letting the government shoot people and call them “terrorists.” It leaves all of us less secure, undermines the rule of law, and can’t be allowed to become routine.
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13 of the Nearly 200 People Murdered by Trump and Hegseth Identified for First Time
“It’s a double tragedy—not only because of the unlawful killings, but because the victims are erased, reduced to anonymity,” said one human rights advocate.
May 15, 2026
The 57 confirmed bombings of boats that the Trump administration has carried out so far since last September have shattered families and communities across Latin America, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Southern Command never acknowledging the identities of the at least 192 people they've killed, beyond declaring them "narco-terrorists."
But despite the concerted effort to keep the names and any information about the victims hidden—their identities "blown away over vast stretches of ocean," as a new report states—20 journalists led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) managed to identify 13 of the men whose killings have been called "murders" by legal experts and rights advocates.
The journalists and researchers represented CasaMacondo, Verdad Abierta, 360-grados.co, and NGO El Veinte in Colombia; Alianza Rebelde Investiga in Venezuela; the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian; and Airwars in the UK.
The investigation, titled "Bombed, Without the Right to a Defense," was completed despite widespread fears of speaking out about the bombings in the affected communities.
"Some relatives of victims in Venezuela and in Santa Marta, Colombia, say they have received threats, as sources confirmed to journalists in this alliance," reads the report. "Authorities have remained largely opaque, and the officials willing to talk do so only off the record, wary of dragging their countries into conflict with [US President Donald] Trump."
Three people named in the report had already been identified publicly in legal complaints—Trinidadians Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, whose families filed a complaint in the US federal court; and Colombian Alejandro Carranza Medina, whose family filed a petition with the US-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The men identified for the first time by CLIP include:
- Juan Carlos Fuentes, a bus driver who told his family he was "going to have to do something risky to see if I can make ends meet" after his bus broke down, and who left behind three children and a grandson;
- Luis Ramón Amundarain, a motorcycle taxi driver and fisherman with a wife and five children;
- Eduard Hidalgo, a fisherman who had been deported from the US in December 2025;
- Jesús Carreño of Venezuela;
- Eduardo Jaime, a "beloved indoor soccer player" in his hometown of Güiria, Venezuela;
- Dushak Milovcic, a student at the National Guard Academy in Venezuela who became involved in drug transporting, starting as "a lookout for smugglers";
- Ricky Joseph, a well-known fishmerman in Savannes Bay, Saint Lucia, whose family lost contact with him after a bombing on February 13 and who is believed to be one of the victims;
- Pedro Ramón Holguín Holguín, who was registered as a fish and seafood wholesaler in Ecuador;
- Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Solórzano, who was rescued by Costa Rican authorities but died following an attack on his boat;
- Luis Alí Martínez, who had a criminal record for drug trafficking and other crimes;
- Ronald Arregocés of Riohacha, Colombia;
- Adrián Lubo, of Riohacha, Colombia, who was called "a great captain" by a person who knew him; and
- Robert Sánchez, who was traveling with his cousin, Amundarain, when the boat they were on was bombed.
Another man was identified by his nickname, and two unnamed people, including an Ecuadorian man who helped survivor Jonathan Obando escape a bombing and later died, were included in the report.
“It’s a double tragedy—not only because of the unlawful killings, but because the victims are erased, reduced to anonymity,” John Walsh, of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told CLIP and the reporting alliance.
The report emphasizes that all of the victims it identified came from poor families and communities. In Uribia, Colombia, where at least two bodies washed ashore after a boat attack, 92% of residents "lack adequate education, healthcare, or basic public services."
"In those conditions, recruiting young men to transport cocaine is easy work—and the pay can be good," reads the report.
A boatman in Uribia told CLIP that "most people here aren’t the owners" of vessels or the drugs they carry. “The people who own the cargo are almost always outsiders—even international players."
María Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of the CLIP, told The Guardian the report affirms that despite the administration's repeated claims that the military is defending "our nation’s interest" and protecting Americans from those who are "trafficking deadly narcotics" like fentanyl and cocaine, “the US is not taking down any Pablo Escobar or Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán."
“Despite the US claim that the strikes are fighting narco-terrorism, what is actually happening is that young people living in extremely precarious conditions, doing whatever work they can to support their families, are being targeted," Ronderos said.
As the investigation into the identities of the boat strike victims illustrates, the people the Trump administration is killing are not in fact the "al Qaeda of our hemisphere" as repeatedly claimed by SecDef.www.elclip.org/los-bombarde...
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— Brian Finucane (@bcfinucane.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 10:13 AM
The boat that Fuentes and Amundarain, who had both gone to Trinidad and Tobago to work, were on was traveling from the Caribbean country to Venezuela, calling into question the claim that the vessel was trafficking drugs.
"Boats carry drugs from South America northwards, not the reverse,” Ronderos told The Guardian.
Legal experts have emphasized that even in the cases of victims who were involved in the drug trade, the bombings still legally qualify as extrajudicial killings, or even murder. Trump informed Congress in October that the White House views the US as being in an armed conflict with drug cartels in Latin America, claiming a rationale for carrying out the boat strikes. But no conflict has officially been declared, and rights experts warn that the military has clearly violated international law by targeting the survivors of some of the boat attacks in "double-tap" strikes.
“The deaths of Joseph and Samaroo were clearly extrajudicial killings,” Steven Watt, an attorney with the ACLU who is working on the case brought by the two Trinidiadian families, told CLIP. He added that "the Trump administration’s argument—that a 'war on drugs' justifies violent strikes like these—cannot legally excuse the killings."
Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group told CLIP that "the law of war permits violence otherwise prohibited, but only during genuine armed conflict—a threshold the Trump administration has failed to meet, as it has not even identified who the US is supposedly fighting."
“Beyond that foundational problem, the administration’s suggestion that vaguely defined ‘enablers’ may be targetable raises further concerns that it is violating the rules of its own bogus legal paradigm," Finucane said.
Ronderos added that “there is no death penalty for cocaine trafficking."
"So the fact that they were killed without even having the chance to defend themselves is deeply troubling," she told The Guardian.
In accordance with international and domestic laws, the US has historically treated drug trafficking on the high seas as a criminal offense and has ensured those who are found trying to bring drugs to the US are brought to justice in court.
A spokesperson for US Southern Command told the reporters that the bombings have been “deliberate, lawful, and precise, directed specifically at narco-terrorists and their enablers," and that the US has "full confidence in the operations and intelligence professionals who inform our missions.”
But the administration has not released any evidence showing the strikes have targeted major drug trafficking operations, and as Common Dreams reported last month, data from US Customs and Border Protection shows little evidence that the strikes are stopping the flow of illicit substances.
“CBP’s seizures of fentanyl at the US-Mexico border had been declining, often sharply, since mid-2023. But since early 2025, the declines stopped,” said Adam Isacson of WOLA at the time. “Halfway into fiscal 2026, seizures are almost exactly half of 2025’s full-year total: a flat trendline.”
Finucane told The Guardian that the boat strikes have never been “a serious counter-drug operation."
"I think this was in part a military spectacle to give the illusion of the administration doing something ‘macho’ about drugs,” Finucane said.
Walsh said Hegseth and Trump "want to impress the public, to make Americans believe that they, unlike previous governments, are finally ending the terrible problem of drug trafficking."
"The profound cruelty and indifference with which they order these systematic and intentional killings allows them to project this menacing image of faceless ‘narco-terrorists,'" he added. "In doing so, they shock many Americans while numbing their sense that the US officials responsible for these murders should be held accountable.”
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House Progressives Demand Pentagon Answer for Alleged Abuse in US-Ecuador Operation
"The United States cannot continue to be complicit in abuses abroad. There must be accountability," said Rep. Chuy García, who co-led a letter to the Pentagon.
May 13, 2026
Backed by anti-war and human rights organizations, 20 "deeply concerned" progressives in the US House of Representatives sent a letter to the Pentagon on Wednesday demanding answers about "reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities during joint US-Ecuador military operations conducted in northern Ecuador."
While bombing Iran and boats allegedly running illegal drugs through the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, President Donald Trump deployed US troops to Ecuador in March for a joint campaign combating "narco-terrorists" in the South American country.
Led by Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), and Sara Jacobs (Calif.), the lawmakers called for "an explanation of the administration's legal justification for the involvement of US armed forces in these operations, which have not been authorized by Congress," as well as their immediate suspension "until these incidents are fully investigated."
The Democrats' letter to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cites reporting that one target "appears to have been a civilian dairy and cattle farm with no known links to armed groups or drug trafficking," where witnesses said "Ecuadorian military personnel interrogated and assaulted unarmed civilians, burned homes and infrastructure, and subjected detainees to torture."
"Beyond these recent incidents, we are concerned that our military is deepening its ties with the government of Ecuador, even as it undergoes an alarming authoritarian and anti-democratic drift," the Democrats wrote, pointing out that "President Daniel Noboa has overseen the violent repression of Indigenous-led protests, publicly threatened the Constitutional Court, and frozen the bank accounts of civil society organizations."
Noboa's allies "have also pursued questionable cases against his political opponents," as "Ecuadorians have endured more than two years of a prolonged state of emergency, marked by the military's domestic deployment to combat so-called 'narco-terrorists," the letter continues. "With investigative reporting now linking President Noboa's family business to drug trafficking and the same illicit networks he claims to be fighting, an independent and transparent investigation into these allegations is warranted."
The letter stresses that "if US forces provide new or continued security assistance to units that engaged in acts such as torture, extrajudicial killings, or enforced disappearances, and there is no credible investigation or prosecution underway, this would constitute a violation of the Leahy Laws, which prohibit assistance to foreign security forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations without effective steps to bring those responsible to justice."
The Democrats—supported by Amnesty International USA, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Human Rights First, Latin American Working Group, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, StoptheDrugWar.org, Washington Office on Latin America, and Win Without War—demanded "a prompt and complete response" to their list of questions by May 22.
"The United States cannot continue to be complicit in abuses abroad. There must be accountability," García said on social media.
As El País reported Wednesday, the letter was made public as Noboa began a two-day trip to Washington, DC, during which he is set to meeting with US Vice President JD Vance and Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Ramdin.
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