In a video posted to Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, crosshairs hover above a black-and-white image of a speedboat cutting through water. Seconds later, the boat explodes into a ball of flames.
The president said defense officials had carried out a strike against 11 “terrorists” from the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, Tuesday morning as part of the administration’s escalating war against drug cartels.
Legal experts and former national security officials have disputed the president’s legal authority to launch extrajudicial killings against suspected drug traffickers, raising consequential questions on both the administration’s growing conflict with Venezuela, and the president’s anti-immigration agenda.
“There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea,” according to Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at research and advocacy group, Washington Office on Latin America. “Even if they had drugs aboard, that’s not a capital offense.”
Lethal force against civilians in international waters “is a war crime if not in self-defense,” according to Isacson. “‘Not yielding to pursuers’ or ‘suspected of carrying drugs’ doesn’t carry a death sentence.”
Hellbound and Down 