In recent months, the waters off Venezuela have become the stage for a dramatic and controversial escalation in U.S. military action. President Donald Trump’s administration has ramped up lethal strikes on alleged narcoterrorist drug boats, resulting in at least 83 deaths since September 2025, according to reporting from USA TODAY. The campaign, which began soon after Trump returned to the White House in January, has sparked a fierce debate in Washington and beyond about its legality, transparency, and broader implications.
The strikes, carried out primarily by elite U.S. military units such as SEAL Team 6, are part of a broader pressure campaign against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration has publicly accused Maduro and Venezuelan criminal organizations—most notably Cartel de los Soles and Tren de Aragua—of facilitating drug trafficking operations that threaten the United States. On November 24, 2025, the administration officially designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, a move that expands the federal government’s authority to target and sanction its members under post-9/11 terrorism statutes.
But beneath the surface of this aggressive policy lies a deepening controversy. Thirteen Senate Democrats, all members of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, sent a letter on November 24 to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, demanding the public release of the legal rationale for these lethal attacks. "Few decisions are more consequential for a democracy than the use of lethal force," the senators wrote, emphasizing the need for transparency and congressional oversight.
One of the most chilling details to emerge from the campaign came from a report in The Washington Post, which described the first Caribbean boat strike. As U.S. surveillance aircraft tracked a vessel with 11 suspected drug traffickers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a spoken directive: "The order was to kill everybody," a source with direct knowledge of the operation told the paper. SEAL Team 6 executed the strike, leaving no survivors as two men clung to the burning ship. The Joint Special Operations commander followed Hegseth’s order to the letter.
For the Trump administration, these actions are justified by the need to combat transnational drug cartels, which the president has repeatedly linked to the deadly fentanyl epidemic in the United States. Trump has argued that criminal organizations in Venezuela, as well as Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, are responsible for smuggling vast quantities of drugs into the U.S. In February, his administration blacklisted Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa, and other groups as "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" organizations, giving federal agencies broad powers to seize assets and restrict travel.
Yet critics point out a crucial distinction: Venezuela is not a major producer or trafficker of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid responsible for more than 250,000 American deaths since 2021. Instead, according to former Justice Department officials and counternarcotics experts cited by USA TODAY, Venezuela is primarily a transit point for cocaine. Lisa Gilbert, co-chair of the Not Above the Law coalition, told the paper, "The suspected smugglers might be aggressive, they might be committing crimes like transporting cocaine, but none of that meets traditional definitions for an attack or an invasion that justifies using lethal force."
The legal justification for the strikes remains shrouded in secrecy. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) drafted a classified opinion on September 5, 2025, asserting that U.S. military personnel involved in these actions cannot be prosecuted. But the administration has so far refused to release the opinion, despite mounting pressure from Congress. The senators’ letter argued, "The declassification and public release of this important document would enhance transparency in the use of deadly force by our Nation’s military and is necessary to ensure Congress and the American people are fully informed of the legal justification supporting these strikes."
Some legal analysts and former officials have gone further, calling the strikes illegal "extrajudicial killings." The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has stated that the strikes "violate international human rights law." The administration, for its part, has offered only vague public statements. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told The Washington Post that "current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law," and the Justice Department told Reuters that "the strikes were consistent with the laws of armed conflict, and as such are lawful orders."
Some of the sharpest criticism has come from Capitol Hill. On November 6, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, spoke out against the strikes, arguing that the suspected drug smugglers "are criminals, not ideological combatants waging war against the United States." Reed insisted that if the administration truly believes these groups are akin to al-Qaida, it should seek explicit congressional authorization through an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), as required by law. "The fact that they haven't is revealing," Reed said, noting that both he and Republican Armed Services Committee Chairman Senator Roger Wicker have repeatedly requested basic information from Defense Secretary Hegseth, only to receive incomplete responses.
Republicans in the Senate have largely backed Trump’s approach, blocking a Democrat-initiated measure on October 8 that would have barred the use of military force against boats in the Caribbean Sea without congressional approval. Senator James Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended the strikes as a necessary response to terrorist threats: "This is an attack on the United States by people who have been designated as terrorists. The president not only has the right, he has the duty to do something about this."
The administration’s posture has only grown more defiant. After Republican Senator Rand Paul publicly questioned the legality of the attacks, Trump offered to brief lawmakers on the strikes but insisted there was no need to seek congressional approval. On October 23, he declared, "I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. … They’re going to be, like, dead. The land is going to be next."
This rhetoric has fueled speculation that the administration may be preparing for even broader military action inside Venezuela itself—a prospect that alarms many lawmakers and international observers. Six congressional Democrats, including Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, have gone so far as to release a video urging military and intelligence officials to refuse illegal orders, a move Trump denounced as "seditious claims that were punishable by death."
At the heart of the controversy is a fundamental question: Who decides when and how the United States uses lethal force abroad, especially in situations that fall outside traditional definitions of war or self-defense? As the legal debate intensifies and the human toll of the strikes mounts, the Trump administration faces growing demands for accountability, transparency, and adherence to both U.S. and international law. Whether those demands will be met remains to be seen, but for now, the stakes—and the scrutiny—could hardly be higher.