International human-rights advocates, legal experts and drug policy reformers are sounding alarms after a U.S. military strike destroyed a small boat off the Venezuelan coast last week, killing those on board. The Trump administration defended the action as part of its expanded war on drugs, but critics describe it as an unprecedented extrajudicial killing carried out without legal justification.
Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, called the strike a dangerous escalation.
“I come at this from a place of real concern about the rule of law,” she said Friday at a video conference with reporters. “We’ve had presidents who have undermined or ignored the rule of law, authorized extrajudicial killings, and taken lives when they shouldn’t have — but they always offered some kind of legal rationale. With the Trump administration, we’re punching clouds. He has taken this step without providing any legal justification whatsoever.”
According to Yager, previous administrations at least framed military actions in terms of congressional authorizations or international humanitarian law, providing something concrete for critics to challenge. “We could disagree with it, but there was something to argue against,” she said. “What this tells me is that this president believes he can kill anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances — and not have to justify it. And that he will be immune from accountability.”
‘Premeditated Murder’
Sarah Harrison, senior analyst at the U.S. Program for the International Crisis Group, was even more blunt.
“The only conclusion that can be drawn is that under all relevant laws, this was an extrajudicial killing,” she said. “This was a murder.”
Trump administration officials claimed the boat, with 11 people aboard, was carrying drugs and that its occupants were members of the Venezuelan criminal network Tren de Aragua. But Harrison argued that even if those claims were true, the action violated both domestic and international law.
“There was no armed attack on the United States that would justify the use of force in self-defense. Even [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio said the boat could have been interdicted and the individuals arrested. The Coast Guard has done this for decades—but they didn’t do that,” she said.
Harrison warned the strike sets a precedent for unchecked military power.
“This was a premeditated murder of suspected criminals — based on the facts provided by the administration itself,” she said. “The U.S. military is prohibited by law, by statute, from executing civilians. ... Under human rights law, there is an absolute prohibition on the arbitrary denial of life — and that’s what this was.”
Harrison urged Congress to act swiftly.
“Operators within the Department of Defense need to know that this was an unlawful order — and they need to know that the consequences of executing a blatantly unlawful order include criminal investigations and prosecutions,” she said.
In announcing the strike, Trump claimed the vessel was transporting suspected Tren de Aragua drug smugglers and a large cocaine shipment from Venezuela to the U.S., before sharing video of the attack on social media.
In February, the administration designated Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel, MS-13, and other drug organizations as foreign terrorist groups. U.S. officials have long attributed the significant flow of cocaine from Venezuela to the U.S. and the resulting drug-related deaths to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who has a $50 million bounty for his capture.
Lessons from Past Tragedies
Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, said the use of the U.S. military to combat drug trafficking is a dangerous move — especially given past tragedies where civilians were killed during counter-narcotics missions.
“There are many reasons why we don’t let drug warriors play judge, jury and executioner. And one of the main reasons is that they keep killing civilians — innocent civilians,” he said.
He cited the 2001 downing of a missionary plane in Peru, which a CIA contractor mistakenly identified as a drug flight. “They ended up killing a U.S. missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her infant daughter, Chastity,” Tree said.
In another example, from 2012, a joint DEA-Honduran operation killed four passengers on a water taxi. “Two of them were pregnant, which under Honduran law counts as six murders. And they tried to cover it up afterward,” he said.
Tree warned that normalization of such killings is among the most troubling trends of the Trump era.
“What concerns me about this precedent is that the administration is normalizing extrajudicial killings. And it’s not a far jump — it’s not a great leap — to bring that back to a domestic context,” he said. “To say on the international stage that we can summarily execute people by Hellfire missile without presenting evidence is outrageous.”
‘The Invasion Theory’
Raha Wala, vice president at the National Immigration Law Center, linked the strike to what he described as the administration’s sweeping “invasion theory,” which is being used to justify everything from a military strike off Venezuela’s coast to deploying troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
The White House is reframing domestic crises — such as the opioid epidemic — as acts of war, he said.
“The invasion theory says that the opioid crisis and drug-related deaths in the U.S. are the equivalent of 9/11,” Wala said. “But it’s a far cry from any kind of armed attack that would justify the use of force.”
Wala said that framing enables the government to treat migrants and asylum seekers as enemy combatants.
“As we all know, if you’re an enemy combatant, you can be killed or detained indefinitely without charge or trial,” he said. “It would be an understatement to say that there are leaps required to follow that chain of logic. You need hyperspeed to get through that chain of logic.”
Regional Reverberations
Daniel Noroña, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, said the strike could embolden militarized responses across Latin America. “This response from the Trump administration is exacerbating a trend of militarizing law enforcement across the Western Hemisphere,” he said.
Noroña said such measures rarely reduce crime, but almost always lead to human-rights abuses.
“These measures are ineffective in combating crime. They stigmatize vulnerable populations — especially in the poorest and most marginalized sectors of society,” he said. “Military personnel cannot be involved in law enforcement activities. These actions don’t strengthen the rule of law — they weaken institutions.”
He warned that the U.S. actions could create a dangerous precedent.
“Our concern is that these kinds of attacks — especially when promoted by the United States — send the message that other states in the region can respond the same way. That could lead to a rise in massive human rights violations,” Noroña said.
‘Our Grief Is Being Used’
For some of the families who have lost loved ones to the opioid crisis, the administration’s approach feels like an insult. Susan Ousterman, a bereaved mother and drug policy reform advocate, denounced the strike.
“This recent U.S. boat strike off Venezuela is not just troubling — it’s outrageous,” she said. “Every time military force is used under the banner of the drug war or any punitive measure, this administration gaslights the American public into thinking they’re protecting us.”
Ousterman pointed out that most fentanyl enters the U.S. through legal ports of entry — not via Caribbean smuggling routes.
“Sending warships abroad isn’t going to stop fentanyl. It won’t stop the opioid crisis. All it does is signal that our leaders would rather stage combat operations than take responsibility for their role in perpetuating the crisis,” she said.
“For those of us who have buried our children, the disrespect from our government is staggering. Instead of taking accountability for decades of failed drug policy, we get more violence. Our grief is being used as cover for policies that guarantee more death,” Ousterman said. “The last thing we want is more violence or unnecessary deaths—because we live this grief every day.”
Eric Eikenberry, government relations director at Win Without War, described the strike as part of a broader authoritarian drift.
“This is the self-styled ‘peace president’ launching an open-ended military campaign in Latin America. No clear mission. No strategy. Just using the military to kill people abroad as a raw assertion of unchecked power — while leaving communities at home to suffer,” he said.
Eikenberry argued that the administration is compounding the opioid crisis by cutting treatment programs while escalating military force abroad.
“They kicked people off Medicaid. They’re dismantling public health and harm reduction programs that save lives,” he said. “And now they’re summarily executing people in the Caribbean — no trial, no due process.”
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