President Trump has formally declared that the United States is embroiled in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which his administration has designated as terrorist organizations. This controversial stance, detailed in a confidential notice sent to Congress this week, also labels individuals suspected of smuggling for these groups as “unlawful combatants.”
The New York Times obtained this notice, which provides further insight into the administration’s questionable legal justification for three U.S. military strikes last month. These operations in the Caribbean Sea resulted in the deaths of all 17 people on board the targeted boats, raising questions about whether these actions were lawful or amounted to murder.
Legal experts warn that President Trump’s formal declaration of an active armed conflict against drug cartels solidifies his assertion of extraordinary wartime powers. Under international law, such a declaration permits a nation to legally kill enemy combatants even if they pose no immediate threat, to detain them indefinitely without trial, and to prosecute them in military courts.
Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer and former senior adviser for law-of-war issues for the Army, argues that drug cartels do not meet the “hostilities” standard required for an armed conflict in legal terms. He emphasizes that selling a dangerous product, while criminal, is fundamentally different from initiating an armed attack against the United States.
Mr. Corn underscored that it is illegal for the military to intentionally target civilians not directly involved in hostilities, even if they are suspected criminals. He condemned the president’s action as an “abuse” that severely oversteps established legal boundaries.
“This is not merely bending the rules,” he stated emphatically. “This is tearing them apart completely.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly defended the president’s actions, stating via email that “the president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”
The Trump administration has consistently framed the military strikes as “self-defense,” claiming that the laws of war allowed them to kill, rather than arrest, individuals on the boats because they were allegedly smuggling drugs for cartels deemed terrorist organizations. The administration also frequently highlights the grim statistic of approximately 100,000 Americans dying annually from overdoses.
However, critics point out that the administration’s strikes have primarily focused on boats originating from Venezuela. Drug trafficking experts note that the recent surge in overdose fatalities is largely attributed to fentanyl sourced from Mexico, not South America. Beyond these factual discrepancies, numerous specialists in armed-conflict law have broadly condemned the administration’s flimsy legal rationale.
The confidential notice to Congress, though classified, cites a statute that mandates reports to lawmakers concerning U.S. armed forces’ involvement in hostilities. It reiterates the administration’s previous arguments but also introduces new claims, specifically portraying the U.S. military’s attacks on these boats as part of an ongoing, active conflict, rather than isolated acts of self-defense.
Specifically, it states that President Trump has “determined” that drug-smuggling cartels are “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.” It further invokes the international law term “noninternational armed conflict” to describe a war against a nonstate entity.
“Based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a noninternational armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” the notice asserted.
International law recognizes various types of warfare. The concept of a “noninternational armed conflict” emerged in 20th-century jurisprudence to define an internal civil war within a single country, contrasting it with conflicts between two or more sovereign nation-states.
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when the U.S. initiated military action against Al Qaeda—a nonstate actor operating across multiple countries—some legal scholars argued that the Bush administration was overextending legal interpretations to justify using wartime powers against a group they considered more akin to a criminal syndicate.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed that the conflict with Al Qaeda constituted a legitimate war. The Court sanctioned the Bush administration’s authority to indefinitely detain captured Al Qaeda members without trial under wartime powers, while also stipulating that the government must adhere to the Geneva Conventions in treating these prisoners humanely and prohibiting torture.
The Court’s reasoning, however, was predicated on Al Qaeda’s direct attack on the United States, utilizing hijacked airplanes as weapons to deliberately kill people, and on Congress having explicitly authorized military force against the group. Notably, in a 2006 ruling, the Court also rejected the Bush administration’s initial attempt to establish military commissions, emphasizing that explicit congressional authorization was required for such tribunals.
In the current situation, the Trump administration appears to be conflating illicit drug trafficking and associated criminal activity with an armed attack. The notice claims that cartels “illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year.” However, it fails to explain how selling a dangerous substance equates to a use of force, and Congress has not granted any authorization for military action against these cartels.
While the U.S. government has long referred to its aggressive law enforcement efforts as a metaphorical “war on drugs,” President Trump’s assertion that he has placed the country in a literal state of war against drug cartels carries significant legal implications. Typically, police arrest suspected drug dealers; summarily killing them would be a criminal act. Yet, in a declared armed conflict, it is lawful to kill opposing combatants on sight.
The notice to Congress also justified the most recently reported boat attack, which occurred on September 15 and involved U.S. Special Operations Forces killing all three individuals on board, by classifying the crew as “unlawful combatants”—treating them as soldiers on a battlefield.
“The vessel was assessed by the U.S. intelligence community to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and, at the time, engaged in trafficking illicit drugs, which could ultimately be used to kill Americans,” the notice stated. “This strike resulted in the destruction of the vessel, the illicit narcotics, and the death of approximately three unlawful combatants.”
The congressional notice did not explicitly identify which specific drug cartels President Trump considers the United States to be in an armed conflict with. Furthermore, it did not outline any criteria the administration uses to determine whether particular suspects possess sufficient ties to these groups to warrant military engagement and lethal force.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the leading Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, criticized President Trump for allegedly believing he could wage “secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy.” Senator Reed stated that the president provided “no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence” to support these strikes.
“Drug cartels are deplorable and must be addressed by law enforcement,” he remarked. “However, by the president’s own admission, the U.S. military is now engaged in an armed conflict with ill-defined adversaries he has unilaterally labeled ‘unlawful combatants,’ deploying thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft against them, all while refusing to inform Congress or the public.”
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer specializing in the laws of armed conflict and a vocal critic of the boat attacks, also expressed deep skepticism. He highlighted that, under international law, a nonstate entity must meet the criteria of being an organized armed group to be considered part of an armed conflict.
“It’s unsurprising that the administration may have adopted such a theory to retroactively legitimize their operations,” Mr. Finucane commented. “I had anticipated this. A significant issue, however, is the lack of clarity regarding whether their targets genuinely constitute an organized armed group, a prerequisite for the U.S. to be engaged in a noninternational armed conflict with them.”
Mr. Finucane specifically questioned whether Tren de Aragua, the gang most frequently cited by the Trump administration as a target, possesses the organizational coherence required to meet this legal threshold. An intelligence assessment from April, later declassified and publicly released, indicated that the Venezuelan group comprised “loosely organized cells of localized individual criminal networks” and was too “decentralized” to effectively coordinate large-scale actions. Edward Wong contributed reporting.