The United States military struck a boat in the Caribbean they claimed was part of a drug trafficking operation by Tren de Aragua, which is recognized as a terrorist group by the United States. Eleven of its crew members were killed.
Update December 1, 2025: This weekend, we learned that this attack took place in two strikes. After the first strike left two survivors floating in the water, the commander in charge issued a second strike to kill them, following an order from Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth to leave no survivors. This second strike would be considered a war crime even during an actual war.
In the hours after the strike, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that there was any evidence the boat was headed to the U.S., saying it was most likely en route to Trinidad or another Caribbean country. His story changed the next day, falling in line with the administration’s narrative.
A week later, on September 9, the Pentagon briefed members of Congress on the strike and couldn’t prove any of their claims. The government had no conclusive evidence that the 11 deceased were armed combatants or Tren de Aragua, that the boat was Venezuelan, or that it was en route to the United States.
There was a concerning lack of transparency surrounding this incident from the start. Despite the Trump administration’s claims, Tren de Aragua does not prioritize drug trafficking. Jeremy McDermott of InSight Crime, which researches Tren de Aragua, found that they mostly engage in “extortion, human smuggling, and human trafficking, preying particularly on Venezuelans who have fled [Nicolás] Maduro’s rule.”
The decision to kill the alleged cartel members is also highly unusual, with the United States Coast Guard typically interdicting drug vessels, at times shooting out their engines without an intent to kill the crew. A former member of the Drug Enforcement Administration noted the pointlessness of killing cartel members in such a manner.
“How long are you going to do it?” he asked. “The drug traffickers are like cockroaches. They’ll wait you out. They’ll do something else and once you leave, they’ll go back.
The Washington Post
Yet more concerning, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tied the justification to take out these alleged terrorists with Trump’s conspiracy theory that Venezuelan dictator Maduro controls Tren de Aragua. As Trumpfile readers may recall, the National Intelligence Council categorically found no evidence for this claim.
At most, Maduro tolerates Tren de Aragua’s operations. However, he still views them as a threat to his regime. While Venezuelan officials have profited off of drug smuggling since former dictator Hugo Chávez gained power, their relationship with organized narco-terrorist groups is limited.
There are several legal questions that arise from this episode. Supposing that the slain operators of the boat are indeed members of Tren de Aragua, Congress never passed an authorization to utilize force against them. In the United States, designating a group as a formal terrorist organization unlocks legal and economic mechanisms against them, but it does not grant authority to the Commander-in-Chief to unilaterally take kinetic action against them.
On a more simple level, the operators of the boat were not involved in armed conflict.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law at Notre Dame, said intentionally killing suspects outside of armed conflict violated “fundamental principles of international law.”
The Washington Post
