The United States recently fused the “war on drugs” with the “war on terror” by killing “narco terrorists” aboard vessels in the Caribbean Sea. The killings violate the human right to life and reflect an alarming new phase of U.S. lawlessness abroad.
On Sept. 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a “kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists” aboard a vessel in international waters, allegedly transporting illegal narcotics to the United States, killing 11 people. The President posted a video of the strike and noted that Tren de Aragua had previously been designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. Secretary of State indicated the U.S. could have intercepted the vessel but chose to destroy it in order to send a deterrent message to traffickers saying, “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up.” He threatened to conduct similar operations in the future, also stating: “What will stop them is when we blow up and get rid of them.”
The U.S. armed forces struck a second vessel on Sept. 15, 2025, killing another three people, and a third vessel on Sept. 19, 2025, killing another three people.
The strikes follow an unpublished order reportedly signed by the U.S. President in August 2025 authorizing the Pentagon to use military force, in foreign territory or international waters, against Latin American drug cartels that the U.S. government had earlier designated a foreign terrorist organization.
The United States has reportedly deployed considerable naval, air and land forces in the region for the stated purpose of deterring illicit narcotics trafficking and “narco-terrorism.”
The Terrorist Designations
The U.S. Department of State designated eight organized criminal groups (gangs and drug cartels) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) on 28 February 2025. The U.S. listings asserted that six of the groups are based primarily in Mexico, one originated in Venezuela, and one began in the United States but has expanded to Central America. The United States alleges some of these groups are present in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela, which indicates the potentially broad application of any U.S. authorization to use force.
On July 25, 2025, the U.S. sanctioned Cartel de los Soles (a.k.a. Cartel of the Suns) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, alleging that it is a “Venezuela-based criminal group headed by Nicolas Maduro Moros and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals in the Maduro regime that provides material support to foreign terrorist organizations threatening the peace and security of the United States, namely Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel.” The U.S. President’s orders accordingly raise the possibility that the United States may use force against foreign State officials. In August 2025, the United States doubled the reward to US$50 million for information leading to the arrest of Mr. Maduro, who the U.S. Department of Justice indicted on drug trafficking charges.
The United States also announced the listing of two Haitian gangs as foreign terrorist organizations on May 2, 2025 and two Ecuadorian criminal groups on Sept. 4, 2025.
UN experts have previously expressed concerns about the United States’ designation of organized crime groups as terrorist organizations in communication USA 14/2025, on the basis that terrorism and organized crime are distinct phenomena to which different legal frameworks should apply. In that communication, concern focused on the use of the terrorist listings in applying the Enemy Aliens Act to carry out unjustified deportations in contravention of international law. UN experts are further concerned that in the present case, terrorist listings are again being used as a first step toward justifying other illegal measures, namely the unlawful use of force.
U.S. Violations of International Law
The facts of the three strikes as presented by the U.S. point to serious violations of international law, and the reported U.S. Presidential order appears to authorize such violations.
The human right to life
Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by the United States in 1992, prohibits the arbitrary deprivation of life, and extrajudicial killings are universally understood as a violation of customary international law. States must respect the human right to life whenever the State’s military activities have a direct and reasonably foreseeable impact on the right to life of individuals outside the State’s territory (UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 36, paras. 22 and 63). This includes on foreign territory not otherwise under the States’s control as well as on the high seas.
The use of potentially lethal force is permitted only where it is strictly necessary and proportionate in personal self-defence or defence of others against an imminent threat to life (General Comment No. 36, para. 12). There is no evidence that anyone on board the three vessels attacked by the U.S. posed such a threat to the life of others in the circumstances. The attacks on the three vessels accordingly violated the right to life of the 17 victims.
Under international law the United States must investigate these apparent extrajudicial killings in line with international standards, prosecute the perpetrators (including those who ordered the attacks) for crimes (such as murder) reflecting the seriousness of the attacks, provide effective remedies and reparation to the victims, and guarantee non-repetition of such attacks.
Use of force on the high seas
Any use of force on the high seas must additionally comply with the international law of the sea, including as regards the rules on the interception and boarding of foreign-flagged and flagless ships (see the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, articles 110–111, reflecting customary international law) and on flagged ships suspected of engaging in drug trafficking (article 17 of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988). There is a right to unilaterally intercept stateless vessels, and to intercept flagged vessels suspected of engaging in drug trafficking with flag State consent. It is unknown whether the three vessels attacked by the U.S. were flying a national flag and thus whether there were lawful grounds for interception.
Regardless, under the law of the sea, a law enforcement not military paradigm governs the use of force, consistent with the right to life discussed earlier. In other words, force must be used as a last resort and in a graduated manner, and the use of potentially lethal force must be used only in self-defence or defence of others. The attack did not appear to comply with these requirements, with the United States admitting that it chose to attack rather than intercept the vessel, and no information provided about any lawful ground for the use of force.
Prohibition on the use of armed force
The activities of criminal groups listed by the United States as terrorist organizations do not constitute armed attacks giving rise to self-defence under international law. Early in 2025, the U.S. President invoked the Alien Enemies Act to claim that Tren de Aragua was engaged in an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against the United States on behalf of the Venezuelan Government, in order to summarily deport alleged members of that organization to El Salvador. However, United Nations experts have repeatedly condemned the President’s order as having no factual or legal basis.
When there is no “armed attack” at all, debates about the scope of self-defence can be set aside, such as whether it extends to attacks by autonomous non-State actors. According to long-established international law, the United States may exercise the right of self-defence only under article 51 of the United Nations Charter and customary law where it is necessary and proportionate in response to an armed attack committed by a foreign State, whether directly by State forces or where a State sends non-State forces to carry out the attack.
However, a question arises whether international law prohibits the use of armed force against a stateless vessel on the high seas, since article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary international law prohibit force only against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State (and by extension, its flagged public and private vessels). International law clearly does not give carte blanche to assassinate pirates and the like. As mentioned, the international law of the sea carefully regulates the interception of flagless vessels and applies a law enforcement not military paradigm.
In addition, none of the potentially affected States appears to have consented to the United States using military force against criminal groups in their territories in the manner envisaged under the U.S. President’s order. It is particularly alarming that the order may be aimed not only at criminal groups but in the case of Venezuela against foreign officials, even including the head of government. The United States previously used illegal force in 1989 to arrest the Panama’s head of government, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges, an action condemned as a violation of international law by the United Nations General Assembly.
States parties engaged in acts of aggression as defined in international law, resulting in deprivation of life, violate ipso facto the right to life under article 6 of the Covenant (Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 36, para. 70). The illegal use of force on foreign territory would also violate the foreign State’s sovereignty and the duty of non-intervention.
International humanitarian law
The United States is plainly not involved in an armed conflict with Tren de Aragua or any of the other criminal groups so as to engage the targeting rules of international humanitarian law.
No other relevant frameworks
There are no separate international law rights to unilaterally use military force in foreign territory to counter terrorism or organized crime, including illicit narcotics trafficking. Nor is there any rule permitting such extraterritorial law enforcement without the foreign State’s consent; any resulting detentions – better described as abductions or kidnapping – would be arbitrary and unlawful, contrary to article 9 of the ICCPR.
Conclusion
The human rights-compliant response to the challenge of transnational organized crime is to make effective use of multilateral law enforcement cooperation tools, including the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and bilateral cooperation, by building relationships of mutual trust and benefit with other States. The United States has a long history of cooperation with States in the region, including building the capacity of foreign law enforcement partners.
The United States could also do much more to preventively mitigate the root causes of organised crime, including by better addressing the demand-side of drug use in the United States and regulating the licit and illicit trade in powerful U.S. weapons that fuel cartel violence and corrode political systems in Latin America. Murdering “narco-terrorists” amounts to vigilante justice becoming of a gangster-State, and the political and military leaders responsible must be investigated, prosecuted, and punished.
