It's Time to Stop the Lawless Killing in the Caribbean

For more than a year, the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean have been turned into a unilateral firing range. Under the banner of a Pentagon campaign named Operation Southern Spear, the United States military has systematically hunted down and destroyed small vessels in international waters, executing hundreds of people on the mere suspicion of drug smuggling. These lethal attacks, carried out without arrest, trial, or public evidence, represent a profound abandonment of the rule of law and amount to state-sanctioned murder on the high seas.

Who Is Carrying Out the Strikes and How Many Have Died?

The killings are being executed directly by the United States armed forces—primarily through U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, utilizing armed drones, fixed-wing aircraft, naval warships, and commando boarding teams. Since the campaign began on September 2, 2025, the U.S. military has conducted more than 70 kinetic strikes on suspected smuggling boats across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

By November 2026, the human cost of this campaign has reached staggering proportions. According to tracking by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and military announcements, at least 243 people have been killed in over 80 strikes, a figure that includes individuals left missing and presumed dead in the wreckage. Subsequent strikes in early November 2026 killed at least seven more people in the Caribbean, with debris and human remains washing ashore in Colombia. While the Pentagon labels every victim a "narco-terrorist," investigations by human rights groups and accounts from grieving families indicate that many of those incinerated at sea were low-level couriers, migrants, or ordinary fishermen who posed no imminent threat to anyone.

Who Is Responsible?

Responsibility for this campaign rests squarely at the top of the American chain of command. President Donald Trump ordered the military offensive in September 2025, declaring that the United States was engaged in a formal "armed conflict" with Latin American drug cartels. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—who refers to his post as "secretary of war"—has championed and overseen the execution of Operation Southern Spear.

Hegseth lowered the Pentagon's targeting standards, requiring only "reasonable certainty" that an individual on a vessel was affiliated with a designated group rather than the stricter "near certainty" threshold previously required in counterterrorism operations. Furthermore, military commanders on the ground have carried out brutal tactics, including a "double-tap" strike during the initial September 2025 attack that killed survivors clinging to the wreckage of a disabled boat.

Is This Legal?

By every recognized standard of domestic and international law, these strikes are blatantly illegal.

First, under international human rights and maritime law, drug trafficking is a criminal offense, not an act of war. Law enforcement agencies are required to interdict vessels, arrest suspects, and bring them before a court of law. As a panel of United Nations human rights experts emphasized in September 2026, "Calling it war does not make it one". Because there is no armed conflict between the United States and drug smugglers, and because small boats hundreds of miles from American shores do not constitute an imminent armed attack justifying national self-defense under the UN Charter, blowing them up constitutes arbitrary, extrajudicial execution.

Second, the campaign violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Congress has never declared war on drug cartels or authorized the use of military force against suspected smugglers. Simply slapping a "foreign terrorist organization" label on criminal syndicates does not grant the executive branch a blank check to execute suspects without due process.

Connection to Thomas Massie’s Impeachment Effort

These lawless killings played a direct role in a rare intra-party revolt on Capitol Hill. On November 9, 2026, Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. While much of the political debate centered on Hegseth’s unauthorized military campaign against Iran, Article Five of Massie’s resolution—explicitly titled "Extrajudicial Killings"—targeted the Caribbean and Pacific boat strikes.

Massie accused Hegseth of violating the Constitution and federal statutes by ordering lethal strikes against suspected traffickers without congressional authorization and by rolling back rules designed to prevent civilian casualties. On November 10, 2026, the House of Representatives voted 211 to 204 to refer Massie’s resolution to the House Judiciary Committee, effectively shelving the impeachment effort for the remainder of the current Congress. Hegseth dismissed the articles as a "political spectacle," insisting that every strike was a lawful order directed by President Trump.

Can Anyone Be Held Accountable?

Despite the defeat of Massie’s resolution, the pursuit of accountability is far from over, though significant institutional hurdles remain. Domestically, incoming Democratic House leadership—set to take control of the chamber in January 2027—has signaled strong interest in investigating Hegseth’s conduct and potentially reviving impeachment proceedings. Congress also holds the power of the purse and could pass binding legislation to cut off funding for Operation Southern Spear, alongside opening formal inquiries into the chain of command responsible for the "double-tap" strikes on shipwrecked survivors.

Grieving families are also turning to the courts in an effort to sue the United States for wrongful death. In January 2026, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a landmark federal lawsuit in Massachusetts, Burnley v. U.S., on behalf of the families of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian fishermen killed in an October 2025 missile strike. Relying on statutes such as the Death on the High Seas Act, the Suits in Admiralty Act, and the Alien Tort Statute, plaintiffs argue that the government waived its sovereign immunity for wrongful acts committed by U.S. forces at sea and violated clear norms of international law. However, these civil suits face formidable legal barriers, as the administration is attempting to shield itself behind the "political question" doctrine, combatant-activity exemptions, and state secrets privileges that keep targeting intelligence hidden from the public.

Internationally, U.S. officials are largely shielded from the International Criminal Court, which Washington has actively sanctioned and does not recognize. However, allied nations have begun to distance themselves; the United Kingdom halted intelligence sharing with the U.S. over the strikes, and UN experts have urged other nations to suspend military and intelligence cooperation that facilitates these killings. Alongside domestic litigation, families and advocacy groups have brought formal complaints before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to demand independent investigations and official reparations.

Ultimately, allowing a government to unilaterally declare suspects "terrorists" and execute them in international waters sets a terrifying precedent. If the United States wishes to preserve any moral authority or commitment to the rule of law, Congress and the courts must halt this maritime killing spree and hold its architects to account.

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Elliott J. Schuchardt is the author of America's Achilles Heel: How to Protect Your Family When America Loses the Reserve Currency. In 2026, Schuchardt was a candidate for the Tennessee General Assembly.