In a dramatic escalation of U.S. military activity near Venezuela, President Donald Trump has blurred the lines between the war on drugs and the war on terror, drawing fierce debate among legal scholars, lawmakers, and international observers. Over the past month, the Trump administration has launched a series of military strikes on boats alleged to be carrying drugs, deployed significant military assets to the Caribbean, and authorized covert operations inside Venezuela, all under a controversial legal doctrine that treats Latin American drug cartels as unlawful combatants.
On October 14, 2025, the U.S. military killed six people in a strike on a boat off the Venezuelan coast, bringing the total death toll from five such strikes to at least 27. According to the Associated Press, these operations have taken place in international waters, sidestepping the jurisdiction of any single country and, crucially, occurring without a formal declaration of war from Congress. The Trump administration justifies these actions by invoking the same legal authority used after the September 11 attacks, which allowed the use of lethal force against al-Qaida. But as Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania, told the AP, “You just can’t call something war to give yourself war powers. However frustrated we may be with the means and results of law enforcement efforts to combat the flow of drugs, it makes a mockery of international law to suggest we are in a noninternational armed conflict with cartels.”
This legal argument is at the heart of the current controversy. The Trump administration has labeled groups like Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang as “unlawful combatants,” a term that opens the door for military strikes, detentions, and covert actions. The administration claims that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is collaborating with these gangs and orchestrating drug trafficking and illegal immigration into the United States—a claim the U.S. intelligence community has reportedly disputed, according to the AP.
The military buildup is nothing short of formidable. On October 15, 2025, three U.S. B-52 bombers flew missions about 150 miles north of Venezuela, circling in the Caribbean Sea, as confirmed by the Global Strike Command and reported by CBS News. These long-range bombers, capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons, were only part of a larger deployment that includes eight warships, a nuclear-powered submarine, fighter jets, and some 10,000 U.S. forces stationed in the region, either on ships or in Puerto Rico.
The Trump administration’s pressure campaign is not limited to military might at sea. President Trump has openly suggested that the U.S. may strike drug trafficking targets by land within Venezuela, a move that would mark a significant escalation. During an October 15 press conference, when asked if he had authorized the CIA to take out Maduro, Trump replied, “It would be a ridiculous question for me to answer.” As reported by NPR, Trump confirmed that he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela as part of the broader campaign against the country’s drug trade.
For President Trump, the focus on Venezuela extends beyond narcotics. Speaking to NPR, he emphasized that the campaign is also about the number of Venezuelan migrants who have entered the U.S. in recent years. This broader framing has led some experts and journalists, like NPR’s Franco Ordoñez, to question whether the administration’s true aim is regime change—a suspicion that harks back to Trump’s first term, when he expended considerable political capital trying to topple Maduro, who remains in power despite U.S. efforts.
From the administration’s perspective, these moves fulfill campaign promises to crack down on drug cartels and stem the flow of narcotics and migrants into the country. “We have been doing that for 30 years and it has been totally ineffective,” Trump said when asked why the Coast Guard wasn’t simply seizing suspected drug boats. “We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now we’ll stop it by land.”
Yet the strategy has drawn sharp criticism from both sides of the political aisle. Democrats and some Republicans argue that the president lacks the authority to carry out such strikes without congressional approval and that the administration has failed to provide adequate evidence that the targeted boats were, in fact, carrying drugs. According to CBS News, the Senate recently voted down a war powers resolution that would have required the president to seek congressional authorization before conducting further military strikes.
Congressional oversight has been further hampered by the administration’s reluctance to share evidence and legal opinions. Two U.S. officials told the Associated Press that lawmakers have not been provided with proof that the boats targeted by the military were transporting narcotics. Independent Senator Angus King of Maine said that members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were denied access to the Pentagon’s legal opinion on whether the strikes adhered to U.S. law.
The stakes are high, not only for U.S. law and diplomacy but also for international law. The United Nations charter forbids the use of force except in self-defense, and the International Criminal Court could, in theory, investigate the strikes as potential war crimes. However, as the AP notes, the court is currently preoccupied with other investigations and its work has been hindered by U.S. sanctions and internal scandals.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has doubled down on its efforts to pressure Maduro. In 2025, the Justice Department doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, accusing him of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world.” Maduro, for his part, has denied any ties to drug cartels and accused the U.S. of plotting regime change, as reported by CBS News.
Despite the dramatic show of force and the legal wrangling, some critics argue that the administration’s focus on Venezuela may be misplaced. According to the AP, the bulk of American overdose deaths stem from fentanyl transported overland from Mexico, not cocaine shipped through the Caribbean. While Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, about 75% of Colombia’s cocaine is smuggled through the eastern Pacific Ocean, bypassing the Caribbean altogether.
As the debate rages on, the families of those killed in the boat strikes face their own obstacles in seeking justice, given recent high court rulings that have narrowed the ability of foreign citizens to sue in U.S. courts. The administration’s aggressive approach has also revived memories of Cold War-era interventions in Latin America, fueling diplomatic tensions and regional unease.
For now, the Trump administration appears undeterred by legal, political, or diplomatic pushback. With a massive military presence in the Caribbean and covert operations underway, the United States is waging a new kind of conflict—one that raises profound questions about the boundaries of presidential power, the future of international law, and the true aims of American foreign policy in the hemisphere.