Trump’s Shadow War on the Cartels: When the U.S. Military Becomes Judge, Jury, and Executioner
“Labeling drug cartels as terrorists doesn’t make them enemy armies, it just lets the White House pretend there’s a war where there isn’t one.”
A New Kind of War and No Trials
In recent months, President Donald Trump has quietly unleashed the U.S. military on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. The campaign began with a September 2025 naval strike that destroyed a small vessel near Venezuela, killing eleven people Trump claimed were “narco-terrorists.” By mid-October, at least six separate strikes had taken place in international waters, with an estimated 27 people killed. The operations were conducted without congressional authorization, judicial oversight, or any form of trial. In each case, Trump publicly celebrated the deaths as victories in a “war on terror.”
The legal catch: these weren’t terrorists in the legal sense. They were suspected smugglers, treated as combatants by executive order alone.
The Legal Sleight of Hand
Trump’s justification rests on one maneuver: re-designating major Latin American cartels, including Mexico’s Sinaloa and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). Those designations are designed to freeze assets and criminalize financial support, not authorize military force. But Trump’s team argues that once cartels are labeled as terrorists, they can be treated as hostile combatants under the laws of war, the same framework used to justify drone strikes against ISIS or al-Qaeda.
“That’s legal alchemy,”says former State Department lawyer Michael Glennon. “Congress never gave the president the power to start a war on crime. Calling it a war doesn’t make it one.”
In practice, this means the White House has declared a “non-international armed conflict” (NIAC) between the United States and non-state criminal groups. That classification allows the military to kill suspects abroad, claiming self-defense under the U.N. Charter and the president’s Article II powers without the need for a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
Constitutional Chaos
Legal experts across the political spectrum call this theory untenable.
Under international law, a NIAC requires sustained, organized, reciprocal hostilities the kind of fighting seen in Syria or Yemen. Drug cartels, while violent, are not a uniform armed force at war with the United States. Without that threshold, every killing outside a battlefield risks becoming an extrajudicial execution.
Domestically, the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. The 1973 War Powers Act also requires congressional authorization within 60 days of initiating hostilities. None has been granted. Former Pentagon counsel Laura Dickinson called the situation “a legal ghost ship it looks like war from a distance, but there’s no lawful keel beneath it.”
The Military Pushback
Behind the scenes, dissent is growing within the ranks. Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the unit overseeing operations in Latin America, announced an early retirement this month. The Pentagon described it as routine, but multiple defense reporters confirm Holsey privately opposed Trump’s rules of engagement.
For officers trained under the Geneva Conventions, being ordered to target civilians accused of trafficking drugs without trial, identity confirmation, or combat context, represents a line few ever expected to cross.
“Once the commander-in-chief can declare anyone a terrorist and order lethal force, you’ve militarized law enforcement,”said one retired Navy JAG on background. “That’s how democracies slide into permanent war.”
Venezuela: The Convenient Battlefield
Trump’s strikes are concentrated off the coast of Venezuela, a country he’s long branded a “narco-state.” The Maduro government condemned the attacks as illegal acts of aggression and appealed to the U.N. Security Council for censure.
For Trump, Venezuela offers an ideal backdrop, dramatic footage of American power, no U.S. casualties, and limited public scrutiny. It’s a spectacle tailor-made for the campaign trail: explosions, arrests, and the appearance of decisive action. Meanwhile, critics note the irony that the administration flexes military muscle in Latin America while avoiding deeper engagement in Ukraine, where a genuine war threatens global security.
“It’s theater, controlled violence for political headlines,” said one diplomat in Bogotá. “You don’t need congressional approval to blow up a boat full of poor fishermen.”
Civilians or Combatants? Nobody Knows
Human-rights monitors in the Caribbean report that several vessels destroyed by U.S. forces may have carried migrants or fishermen, not armed traffickers. Survivors rescued by nearby ships were detained by U.S. personnel, but Washington has refused to clarify their legal status, prisoner of war, criminal defendant, or ghost detainee.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch have demanded release of the Office of Legal Counsel memo that allegedly authorizes the killings. Thus far, the Justice Department has ignored all Freedom of Information Act requests. Without transparency, there’s no accountability and no way to know who’s dying under the banner of counter-terrorism.
The Slippery Slope Ahead
If this “narco-terror war” doctrine holds, future presidents could apply it anywhere at home or abroad by declaring enemies “terrorists” and bypassing the courts entirely.
Once the precedent exists, the boundaries blur fast:
A smuggler today, a protester tomorrow.
A trafficker this week, a journalist next.
This is why the rule of law arrest, trial, conviction exists. When the executive branch trades it for spectacle, the republic edges toward authoritarianism.
The Bottom Line
Trump’s anti-cartel offensive isn’t law enforcement. It’s state violence wrapped in patriotic branding. It violates the core legal principle that separates a democracy from a dictatorship: the idea that no one dies on executive order alone.
“You can’t bomb your way out of drug addiction,” said one retired DEA agent. “You can only destroy the moral authority of the country in the process.”
South Florida, long a front line of the drug trade, should recognize the danger. The nation that once condemned Latin American death squads now risks becoming one.
Sources
- https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-military-kills-11-people-strike-alleged-drug-boat-venezuela-trump-says-2025-09-03/
- https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/how-many-us-strikes-boats-near-venezuela-have-there-been-2025-10-17/
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/6/can-us-strikes-on-suspected-drug-boats-off-venezuela-be-legally-justified
- https://apnews.com/article/12820c173da3de80c1a7a559c252c743
- https://apnews.com/article/af1a784864268707a76755a98615563e
- https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-asks-un-security-council-say-us-strikes-illegal-2025-10-16/
- https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/trump-venezuela-cartel-strikes-00610404
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-military-strikes-on-suspected-drug-smugglers-spark-legal-and-diplomatic-concerns
