Trump’s ship attacks are aimed at combating drug trafficking, but experts say the impact on drug distribution will be negligible.
Published December 9, 2025
A US rights watchdog group has filed a lawsuit seeking a clearer explanation of the legal basis used to justify the Trump administration’s targeting of drug-trafficking vessels off the coast of Latin America.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), its New York state affiliate, the NYCLU, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, seeks an opinion from the Office of Internal Counsel (OLC), which advises the executive branch on legal issues.
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“The public has a right to know how our government justifies the cold-blooded murders of civilians as legal, and why it believes it can hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards to those who commit these crimes,” ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a press release. “The Trump administration must stop these illegal and immoral attacks, and the officials who carried them out must be held accountable.”
At least 86 people have been killed since the Trump administration announced the first strikes in early September. The president has portrayed this as part of his anti-drug efforts. A total of 22 declared strikes have been carried out in the Caribbean region, despite the fact that drug trafficking is a criminal act and therefore widely considered to be illegal under both international and US law.
In a press statement, the two organizations say they hope to force disclosure from the OLC that “appears to be celebrating the ongoing strike as a legitimate act in an alleged ‘armed conflict’ with an unspecified ‘drug cartel.'”
NYCLU staff attorney Ify Chikezie told Al Jazeera by phone that the lawsuit was filed after the State Department, Department of Defense, and OLC failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, ignoring legal requirements.
“I believe that the people have a right to see the documents that justify the regime’s strikes,” Chikezie said, adding that the government was trying to evade scrutiny.
Legal experts flatly deny the administration’s argument that drug trafficking is an attack on the United States and that suspected traffickers are therefore illegal combatants who can be killed by military force. But despite the high level of illegality, the Trump administration has pushed for more strikes, vowing to continue them and sharing videos of the struck small boats on social media.
“The Trump administration seems to be manufacturing the idea that we are at war with someone somewhere, but these are civilians who are at worst engaging in criminal activity, and their killings are just murders,” Chikezie said.
Others say the strike has had only a negligible impact on drug distribution, casting doubt on the administration’s stated goal of combating drug trafficking.
The campaign also comes at a time of heightened U.S. threats against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration has accused of coordinating the activities of criminal organizations, despite an internal U.S. intelligence assessment that contradicted that claim.
The United States has sent large forces to the region, including aircraft carriers and thousands of troops, and there is widespread speculation about a possible attack on Venezuela to topple Maduro’s government.
