Eleven Killed In US Strike On Boat

Donald Trump has made known his desire to kill drug traffickers. Now he claims to have killed eleven of them by having the US Navy blow up a boat in the Caribbean. The administration claims that the eleven were members of Tren de Aragua, trafficking drugs.

With the destruction of the boat, its passengers, and contents, that claim will be difficult to prove or disprove. The administration claims to have intelligence to back up its claims.

Even if the claims about the boat are true, the action was most likely illegal, removing the possibility of due process and going directly to execution for something that is not a capital crime in the US.

Brian Finucane discusses the legal issues.

 The use of lethal force in this attack appears gratuitous and the administration has not explained why law enforcement tools were inadequate to address the situation. Of a piece with the deployment of troops to U.S. cities, the strike is an unnecessary and performative use of the U.S. military—a use that is legally fraught at best. (Indeed, Trump threatened Chicago with a troop deployment in the same Oval Office appearance in which he announced the strike.) And the use of lethal force against these supposed terrorists is ominous both because the Trump administration has vowed further such strikes in Latin America and because this administration has deployed the “terrorist” label more broadly domestically, including against migrants and political opponents.

The incident brings up another issue of concern – the military obeying illegal orders. In theory, military personnel may refuse to obey illegal orders. But who is to determine whether those orders are illegal?

There is now a court decision that Trump’s use of the military in Los Angeles constitutes a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. But when the National Guard were ordered into Los Angeles, the legality may not have been clear to their command. It would seem that the strike in the Caribbean could not easily be called legal. Information is still emerging on the strike. We need to hear from the Navy.