On Tuesday, the Trump administration carried out a strike by US forces on a boat in the Caribbean. The White House claimed to have killed 11 drug traffickers, which appears to be an assassination in international waters.
Trump said the Tren de Aragua cartel operated the boat and was carrying drugs bound for the US.
SecDef Pete Hegseth was asked about the legal authority to do so.
Q: What legal authority did the Pentagon invoke to strike that boat full of drug smugglers?
HEGSETH: We have the absolute and complete authority to conduct that. First of all, just the defense of the American people alone.
100,000 Americans were killed each year under the previous administration because of an open border and open drug traffic flood as an assault on the American people.
I said we smoked the drug boat and there’s 11 narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean and when other people try to do that, they’re going to meet the same fate.
With this administration, I want to see proof that these were drug smugglers. You can’t rely on any word spoken by Trump and his cabinet members.
Trump wants to be an autocratic dictator so bad that he’s ordering assassinations of alleged smugglers, which has always been under the purview of the US Coast Guard.
US military’s legal advisors have previously said that the US should “act in a manner consistent with its provisions”.
