WSJ What’s News - Are Trump’s Lethal Attacks on Drug Boats Legal?

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

In the past month, the Trump administration has ordered a trio of military attacks against boats suspected to be transporting drugs from South America to the U.S. However, little information has been released about the people who were killed and whether there were actually any drugs aboard. And some Pentagon officials have raised concerns about the legality of these strikes. WSJ national security reporter Vera Bergengruen and legal correspondent Jess Bravin explore how Washington’s approach to combating drug smuggling has changed and the potential pitfalls of these strikes. Caitlin McCabe hosts. Further Reading Trump Orders Pentagon to Deploy Three Warships Against Latin American Drug Cartels Suspected Venezuela Drug Boat Had Turned Around Before U.S. Strike U.S. Strikes Second Alleged Drug Boat From Venezuela, Trump Says Trump Says He Ordered Another Strike on an Alleged Drug Boat Exclusive | Pentagon Lawyers Raise Concerns Over Trump’s Strikes on Alleged Drug Boats Trump Invokes Post-9/11 Playbook in Attacks on Drug Cartels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Protecting your nest egg, no matter what the market does, most people call that the smart money. At American National Insurance Company, we call it a multi-year guarantee annuity. Fund your annuity online at annuities.americanational.com. Hey, What's News listeners. It's Sunday, September 28th. I'm Caitlin McCabe for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackled the big questions about the biggest stories in the news. by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. On the show this week, we're taking a look at the Trump administration's use of military force on boats in international waters,

which is starting to happen with more frequency. There's one big problem, though. Some officials aren't so sure that the strikes are even legal, or whether the people targeted are actually smuggling narcotics at all. Stay tuned as we explore that big question and more. About eight months ago, on the same day he was sworn into office, President Trump signed an executive order that set the stage for him to designate international cartels as terrorist organizations. Since then, the White House has ratcheted up its pressure

against these drug groups, culminating in a trio of lethal military strikes against boats this month that have killed more than a dozen people. And the Trump administration, has indicated it doesn't intend to pump the brakes on such attacks anytime soon. But what is the Trump administration's end goal here? Joining me now is Vera Bergen-Gruin, who covers national security for the journal and has been covering these boat strikes since they began. Vera, the U.S. has long been cracking down on drug trafficking from South America. Can you update us on how those priorities have changed since Trump took office in January?

President Trump came into office, making fairly clear that he was going to be very focused on the hemisphere and very focused specifically on combating drug trafficking, which was one of his main priorities during the campaign. And one of the very first things he did when he got into the White House again was designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations or FTOs. What that means is you can treat all of these drug cartels as terrorists. A couple of weeks ago, we started seeing a very different kind of buildup. The U.S. started to send warships. They started sending airplanes to Puerto Rico, and they started doing a quite unprecedented military buildup in the Caribbean, pretty close to Venezuela, that they said was intended to deter drug trafficking. But we hadn't really

seen that before. The last time we saw any kind of kinetic force used in that part of the world was in Panama in the 80s. Fast forward to September, we've had a trio of attacks within pretty quick succession. Vera, what do we know about the boats that have been attacked? Were there drugs on board? And do we know that they were heading for the U.S.? In some ways, we actually know quite little. The Pentagon hasn't really done a briefing. The Trump administration has released these kind of grainy videos from the air that show these boats speeding north from Venezuela towards the Caribbean. And then you see these massive fireball coming out of these boats until they stop moving. Trump officials have said that these boats are heading to the U.S., but everything we've seen

is that these really quite small drug boats are transiting the Caribbean from Venezuela to the Caribbean Islands. And it's not quite clear where the drugs were going from there. They didn't say where the boats were attacked. They didn't say who was on board, their identities or nationalities. They didn't say at the time or provide any evidence of the drugs that were on board. The president did say that he had seen evidence of drugs floating in the water. He mentioned cocaine and sentinel. A couple of days ago, the Dominican Republic said that they had found hundreds of packages of cocaine floating near the site of the strike. And we got a little bit more information from them, and they released images of these packages. But even so, a lot of people say that's not enough information in order

to actually be at this point killing more than a dozen suspected drug traffickers without really releasing much evidence about who they were and whether they were actually transporting drugs. I want to shift gears a little bit about how this is being received internationally. How are leaders responding to this approach? We've seen some countries in the region, in the Caribbean, be supportive. We've seen the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and some other small countries who think it's to their advantage to be publicly supporting the Trump administration, kind of say that they support this.

But we've seen Colombia and some others really speak out against it. They've called it excessive and destabilizing. And they've called them basically extrajudicial killings that are outside of international law. And of course, they're also worried that whatever it happens to Venezuela, it's going to really destabilize the entire region. As for Venezuela itself, you've got President Maduro who has been saying for years that the U.S. is after him, that they're trying to unseat him. So we have seen him in some ways benefit from this theater, from images that we've seen because he's rallying Venezuelans. He's asking them to enlist in a draft. We've seen videos of grandmothers who are learning how to use firearms.

And this kind of invasion narrative is helping somebody who's quite an unpopular president. Yeah, political theater, that's something that I wanted to touch on. On really both sides here, the U.S. and Venezuela, how much of it is this political theater versus a much more significant and possibly protracted start to conflict in the region? So far, it's fairly evident that the theater is. is definitely the end goal. We're not really seeing, as far as we know, many strikes happening in secret,

the way that we've often seen them sometimes in the Middle East. In this case, almost every strike has been publicized. The videos are immediately posted. They're distributed very widely by the White House, and it's supposed to be this massive show of force, in some case almost just proportionate show of force, against these tiny drug boats carrying three or four people.

At the same time, it definitely is a real escalation. And it's a very real military buildup of resources and assets in the region that we have not seen in decades. Every indication we've had so far from the Trump administration, it seems like they are planning to not necessarily slow down these attacks. Do you have any insight into what more we might be able to expect on this front? That's definitely true. FBI director for Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth, Secretary of State Mark Rubio, they are all saying this is an ongoing operation. we are going to keep targeting boats as long as it takes. So everything the Trump administration has said indicates they intend for this to be a very long-term operation

where they're really going to keep targeting drug traffickers until they see a very significant decline in the number of drugs crossing into the U.S. Of course, that's where the legal issue comes into play, and it's unclear whether the Trump administration will be able to do this under the authorities they're currently using. That's National Security Reporter Vera Bergen-Gruent. Vera, thanks for joining us today. Thanks so much. Coming up, we'll unpack a few more questions, including whether these boat strikes are even legal,

and whether there is a risk that Venezuela or other countries could respond. We'll answer those and more just after the break. Protecting your nest egg, no matter what the market does, most people call that the smart money. At American National Insurance Company, we call it a business company. A multi-year guarantee annuity. Fund your annuity online at annuities.americanational.com. Now that we've laid out what the Trump administration has been doing to combat drug smuggling from Venezuela, it's time to address a lingering question.

Are military strikes on these types of boats legal? Joining me now is journal legal correspondent, Jess Braven. And Jess, this crackdown is quite the escalation compared to the way the U.S. used to do things. What is the legal basis that the Trump administration is using to justify these attacks? The president declared these cartels terrorist organizations and therefore they're national security threat and they're in international water. So he justifies these attacks as going after a military target. That's the rationale. It's something we haven't seen before.

And it's also a change from the way that the United States and basically every other country is handled. called international drug smuggling before as a criminal matter. In past, we have used military force against suspected drug boats, but that was to confiscate them, to interdict them, bring them to a U.S. port, arrest the people there, not to essentially destroy them and kill them from a distance. And it seems like this is part of this post-9-11 playbook that the Trump administration is using here. Can you talk a little bit more about these tactics and what they're reminiscent of? After 9-11, the Bush administration decided to reinterpret international law and reinterpret its legal obligations to let it do a lot more stuff, a lot more stuff that would have been illegal under the understanding of international law and U.S. law that preceded 9-11. And what we saw there was a lot of pushback within the Pentagon, within the State Department, within the U.S. government, with lawyers saying, hey, this is legally questionable, if not outright, illegal.

The Trump administration knows that history, and they've taken some actions to prevent it. For one, the Defense Secretary has complained about Jags or Judge Advocates, that's the term for military uniform lawyer, being too legalistic and being too restrictive implicitly of what he can do. And we also know that this president likes to find military solutions to what have been seen traditionally as civilian problems. We've seen the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines to American cities over the objection of local officials. In here we see the use of lethal force against drug smugglers. And drug smuggling has been for decades and decades a huge problem around the world and in this country. But it has been

seen as a criminal law issue, not one that's a military threat. I want to get to the big question that I think has dominated the conversation in these past few weeks. How is this being received at home? It seems like some military lawyers and other defense department officials are raising concerns about the legality of these strikes. Is that right? Well, they are. One reason is that a terrorist organization has been understood to be an entity with a political objective. It's trying to terrorize civilian population or leadership to make it change a policy. Drug cartels aren't really in the politics game other than to support their commercial interests.

So that's one issue. Another issue is that a lot of officials have lost their jobs because they've been seen as not being sufficiently supportive of what the administration wants to do. So the degree to which there is pushback is unclear, but there's at least some. Now, on the other hand, though, keep in mind that there's a bigger picture here. The president has also said he believes that the death penalty should be expanded to include drug smuggling. The United States Supreme Court, under its current doctrine, wouldn't allow that. capital punishment is only authorized for homicide, in other words, for directly killing somebody, bringing in a product that could be lethal to a number of people, that wouldn't qualify

under the current doctrine of the U.S. Supreme Court. So in a sense, he has found a workaround from the domestic legal system where he can't put drug smugglers to death. But if he kills them before they enter the United States, that's outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court and its constitutional holdings. One extension of this story is, of course, how international leaders are responding. We've clearly seen the most forceful response from Venezuela and Nicholas Maduro there. He's come out quite vehemently and condemned these strikes. Does a country like Venezuela have legal grounds to respond?

There are certain international bodies where complaints can be filed. There's an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which the United States is a member of, potentially Venezuela, to file a complaint there and that body would hold hearings, but that body can't do anything in the United States other than simply issue an opinion about what transpired. The most that Venezuela or any country could do would be to try to get some kind of international legal consensus disagreeing with the United States' position. And the United States historically has not really given a great deal of weight to scolding from international bodies. The only legal enforcement an arm that I can think of is the United Nations Security Council where it can authorize

measures against miscreant states. But the United States and two of its allies have veto power on the Security Council, so forget it. So suffice to say it's possible we could see more boat strikes here. For sure. We've had three already. And there have been questions raised about them. But the more you have, the more acceptable it becomes. First one might have been quite a stunning event if there's a few every month. And that just becomes part of the new normal. So it definitely seems like this is a space to watch. Thanks for joining us, Jess. Kailen, anytime. That's Jess Braven, legal correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. And that's it for What's News Sunday for September 28th. Today's show is produced by Zoe Colkin with supervising producer Sandra Kilhoff and Deputy

Editor Chris Sinsley. I'm Caitlin McCabe and we'll be back tomorrow morning with a brand new show. Until then, thanks for listening. Nearly Home Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for Realtor.com, the pro's number one most trusted app. A dream home isn't a dream home if it comes with a nightmare commute. That's why realter.com has real commute, so you can search by drive time. Download the realtor.com app today because you're nearly home.

Make it real with Realtor.com. Pro's number one most trusted app based on August 2024 proprietary survey.