President Trump dispatches USS Gerald Ford to South America amid tensions in Venezuela
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth deployed a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and guided guided missile destroyers to the South American coast.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has slammed reports that the Trump administration ordered military officials to “kill everyone” during an attack on a ship believed to be carrying drug cargo in the Caribbean.
“As always, fake news is spreading more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reports to discredit our great warriors who are fighting to protect our homeland,” Hegseth, 45, told X in a Nov. 28 post.
The defense secretary was responding to a Washington Post article citing two unnamed sources who claimed that a missile hit the ship as it sailed off the coast of Trinidad, and that two people clinging to the smoldering wreckage were hit by a missile and that he ordered his troops to leave no survivors.
Since September, the Trump administration has attacked at least 21 boats in international waters, killing 83 people. President Trump and other officials have defended the ship attack as an attempt to crack down on illegal drugs entering the United States, but lawmakers of both parties have criticized the administration for not providing any intelligence reports or other evidence about what the ship was carrying.
“At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in an Oct. 26 television appearance. fox news sunday. “This is similar to what China is doing and what Iran is doing with drug dealers. They summarily execute them without presenting the evidence to their citizens. So it’s wrong.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared a story about Hegseth’s alleged orders, raised similar concerns about the constitutionality of the strike in a Nov. 28 post about X.
“If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking over warnings that he is responsible for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s probably because he knows he has given illegal orders to kill people,” Murphy said.
The report comes amid a U.S. military buildup near Venezuela that President Trump says is necessary to fight gangs such as Torren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. For example, the Venezuelan criminal organization known as Cartel de los Soles was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States on November 24th.
Hegseth defends abandoning ‘kid glove approach’ to drug war
The 1949 Geneva Conventions, the core of humanitarian rules and international standards, require injured or sick combatants to be recovered and treated by either side in a conflict.
But in a Nov. 28 post condemning the report, Hegseth said, “Each of the traffickers we kill has ties to a terrorist group,” and argued that current U.S. operations in the Caribbean are legal under both U.S. and international law.
“The Biden administration has favored a kid-gloves approach, allowing millions of people, including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans, to flood our communities with drugs and violence.”
“The Trump administration closed the border and launched an attack on narco-terrorists. Biden coddled the terrorists, but we will kill them.”
But legal scholars and others continue to question the legality of the boat attack, and spokespeople for the White House, Justice Department, and Pentagon did not respond to USA TODAY’s requests for comment on what laws the administration is using to justify the attack.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Nov. 28 that his powerful committee had ordered a Department of Defense investigation into the air strikes. “We will conduct vigorous oversight to uncover the facts about these situations.”
Mr. Wicker, along with Sen. Jack Reed (DR.I.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, sent multiple requests to Mr. Hegseth for basic information, including legal legitimacy and information supporting individual strikes.
Several legal experts also spoke out, saying President Trump and his administration’s rationale is an unprecedented step for the United States to use the military rather than law enforcement to enforce its drug war with Congressional authorization.
During Trump’s first term, he expressed admiration for foreign leaders who instituted the death penalty for drug traffickers, including former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose drug war policies have led to charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.
In response to questions about the boat strike, President Trump said last month that he saw no reason to involve Congress, suggesting that lawmakers and voters would not mind such an action in the name of interdicting illegal drugs.
“I don’t think we necessarily need to seek a declaration of war,” Trump said. “I think we’re just going to kill the people who are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be like, dead.”
