Trump's extrajudicial killings point to something even more chilling

The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits military troops from committing unlawful killings, defined at 10 USC et. seq. Troops can kill enemy combatants on sight, but only when engaged in armed conflict, or when there is an imminent threat. Even when we are at war, it is a war crime for troops to deliberately kill civilians unless it’s an act of self-defense in response to imminent danger.

On September 2, in international waters, on suspicion that a small boat off the coast of Venezuela was carrying drugs to Trinidad, President Donald Trump ordered a strike. The boat was carrying 11 people, all of whom were killed.

There were no efforts to speak to, arrest or interdict the traffickers. There was no sharing of intelligence, no imminent threat, and no diplomacy. Instead, Trump, unencumbered by constraints of law, ordered the boat blown out of the water.

The next day, the New York Times reported that “Pentagon officials were still working… on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Reckless violence

After the strike, Trump posted, “Earlier this morning, on My Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”

Pete Hegseth, the U.S. “Secretary of War,” took his own victory lap with, “We're going to go on the offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” His Neanderthalic bleating tracks similar talk from ICE and DHS as theyglorify militarism and violence to recruit new agents, for whom a criminal background is not an automatic disqualification.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has consistently defended war criminals, dismissing military law as an inconvenient intrusion onto combat authority. If his disdain for “tepid legality” in favor of maximum “lethality” in killing 11 people was not an admission of guilt — meaning he knew the order was illegal but didn’t care — nothing is.

Equally chilling, when Brian Krassenstein, a social influencer, noted online that “killing citizens of another nation who are civilians, without any due process, is called a war crime,” Vice President JD Vance wrote back, “I don’t give a s--- what you call it.”

Extrajudicial killings

When testosterone highs from the strike finally dissipated, military analysts began questioning the maneuver. They questioned, in particular, its legality.

Administration officials explained that narcotics on the boat posed an “imminent national security threat.”

But that claim doesn’t hold up, given that the boat was headed for Trinidad, even if drugs were on board. Worse, unlike typical drug interdictions by the U.S. Coast Guard, this strike was carried out without warning shots. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said simply that, “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders they blew it up,” and promised more violence in the near future.

Whether drugs were on the ship or not, drug runners are criminal civilians, not enemy combatants. The closest thing I’ve seen to a law-adjacent defense is the administration’s bootstrapping claim that Trump could order a strike on Tren de Aragua because Trump has designated it a terrorist organization. But that’s like claiming the right to kill civilians by association. Experts appear to agree:

Frank Kendall, former secretary of the Air Force, said the kill targets, “weren’t engaged in anything like a direct attack on the United States” and weren’t afforded a trial to determine their guilt. He added: “Frankly, I can’t see how this can be considered anything other than a nonjudicial killing outside the boundaries of domestic and international law.”Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel and former Army senior adviser on the law of war, said, “I don’t think there is any way to legitimately characterize a drug ship heading from Venezuela, arguably to Trinidad, as an actual or imminent armed attack against the United States, justifying this military response.”Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer, agreed that even the designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups doesn’t translate into authority to use military force against them. Such designation enables the U.S. to levy sanctions and pursue criminal prosecutions, not to just open fire and kill them.

American lives at risk

The Venezuelan government is now legitimately accusing the U.S. of extrajudicial murder, and preparing for escalating violence. In response to Trump’s attack, President Nicolás Maduro ordered the deployment of 25,000 soldiers to Venezuela’s coastal regions, more than doubling the country’s military presence in those areas.

Maduro has said that he suspects Trump is really threatening regime change with the strike and the buildup of U.S. naval forces in the area, because Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves.

Others believe Trump’s escalating use of military force is an attempt to divert public attention away from the Epstein files, corruption and tanking economy.

Still others say Trump is dangerously unhinged, projecting imagery of power to mask his administration’s widespread ineptitude. While these motivations are not mutually exclusive, Venezuela’s long term allies, China and Russia, are watching closely.

Whatever his true reason, if Trump has the authority to unilaterally redefine civilian suspects as “combatants” even though they pose no imminent threat, he can redefine any group as a terrorist organization, and order them killed.

That may present a tidy solution to Trump’s stubborn due process problem, but it is the stuff of Nazis. Even though today’s victims are brown and Black, trapped in poverty, and therefore disposable to men like Trump, killing them extrajudicially is murder.

I don’t give a s--- what the administration calls it.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.