President Donald Trump’s expanding use of military strikes against boats suspected of carrying narcotics risks setting a new and lower standard for the use of lethal attacks abroad — one that critics say could alienate allies in the fight against illegal drugs and amount to a potential misuse of presidential power.
Two new U.S. attacks, which occurred on Wednesday off the coast of Colombia, killed five people and extended the strikes into the Pacific for the first time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced.
“Narco-terorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere,” Hegseth wrote on X. “There will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”
Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said strikes on land could be next. “We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” he said. “We’re totally prepared to do that. We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land.”
President Trump praised the latest drone attack on an alleged drug boat on Wednesday, calling it “violent” and “amazing,” and said the U.S. military has “the greatest weapons in the world.”
The nine strikes by the Trump administration on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean have raised questions about the legality of such attacks. The administration claims that the alleged drug traffickers being targeted are “unlawful combatants” participating in a war instead of criminals illegally carrying out drug operations.
The location of the most recent attacks could further anger Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who accused the United States of “murder” after a strike last month in the Caribbean killed a Colombian national Petro described as a fisherman. In response, Trump enacted tariffs against Colombia, cut U.S. aid and called Petro “an illegal drug leader.”
A former U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity warned that Colombia has been an important ally in the American effort to stem the flow of drugs from Latin America. If Wednesday’s drone strikes killed Colombian nationals, Petro could come under intense public pressure to stand up to Trump.
“The U.S. risks alienating countries like Colombia,” said the former intelligence official. “There is always an inherent risk of alienating partners with actions perceived as overly aggressive.”
Misuse of war powers?
The strikes are raising concerns in a variety of quarters, including from former officials in Republican and Democratic administrations.
Harold Hongju Koh, a professor at Yale Law School and former State Department official who reviewed the legality of U.S. drone strikes against terrorists during the Obama administration, said Trump’s attacks are unprecedented and illegal.
Koh said the individuals on the targeted ships “were summarily executed for non-capital offenses with no rights to due process or even to claim mistaken identity or to prove innocence.” He added, “They were declared guilty and executable without anyone ever being told their names.”
John Yoo, a former Justice Department official during the presidency of George W. Bush, has emerged as an unlikely critic of Trump’s strikes. Yoo was one of the authors of what became known as the “torture memos,” which created legal justification for interrogation techniques widely viewed as torture.
In an essay published earlier this month, Yoo, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, warned that President Trump was using powers created for times of war to address a law-enforcement problem.
“The White House has yet to provide compelling evidence in court or to Congress that drug cartels have become arms of the Venezuelan government,” Yoo wrote in the journal Civitas Outlook. “To confuse them with wartime enemies is to misuse the tools of war, erode constitutional limits, and endanger liberty at home.”
White House officials have defended the strikes, which have killed 34 people so far according to government estimates. In a letter to Congress in September after the first strike, Trump said the attacks were acts of “self-defense” against traffickers of narcotics that kill Americans. Two weeks later, the White House informed Congress that the president had “determined” that the U.S. was now in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels that the president had declared terrorists in an earlier executive order.
Koh said the boat attacks did not meet the preconditions required for lethal strikes that were required under a policy developed by the Obama administration and used by the first Trump administration. He said there was, for example, “no declared war” and no “threat of violent attack.” A copy of the policy was made public in 2023 after the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times sued for its release.
The former senior U.S. intelligence official said that under earlier administrations, strikes against those identified as terrorists were vetted beforehand by lawyers. The Trump administration has so far provided few details regarding the strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, including the role, if any, of lawyers. “When decisions were made for direct action, lawyers were always consulted or in the room,” said the official, who asked not to be named, citing fear of retaliation. “There were always standards for making sure that you used the minimum amount of force and limiting the civilian casualties. The bottom line was that it was done in accordance with the laws of armed conflict.” Koh said the boat strikes are part of a broad effort by Trump to pursue sweeping new presidential powers, from providing few details about lethal military strikes overseas to deploying National Guard troops in American cities. “Because Trump recognizes no constitutional limits on his unilateral powers,” Koh said, “it is up to Congress and the courts to restrain his team’s illegal fascination with executive militarism.” On Monday, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, called for the Pentagon to release additional information about its strikes and the departure of the Navy commander overseeing the strikes. After the strike on Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the Trump administration was “abjectly failing to provide essential facts the American people deserve about its lethal military strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.” A small number of Republicans are beginning to question the strikes. On Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., criticized the administration in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” saying the strikes “go against all of our tradition” and “all these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime.” “If our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world in which 25% of the people might be innocent,” Paul said. After the strike in the Pacific on Wednesday, Paul posted on X: “The Constitution requires Congress to authorize war. “Until then treat this as law enforcement, not warfare.” Last week, Paul joined Democrats who argued that Trump did not have the power to carry out such attacks without a declaration of war by Congress. Rand and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted for a Democratic resolution that would have blocked the U.S. military from engaging in “hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.” The resolution failed in a 48-51 vote, largely along party lines.
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MSNBC. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News, editing stories about national security and law enforcement and writing stories about the Justice Department and FBI. He is the author of five books, most recently, "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI and the War on Democracy."
Experience
Before joining NBC News, I worked as an executive editor of The New Yorker website and as a foreign correspondent, investigative reporter and columnist for Reuters, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor. I have reported on the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, State Department and the New York City court system. I covered the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Bosnia.
Awards
Pulitzer, Polk, Overseas Press Club and Livingston Recommended
Blunt criticism from a Republican senator
