New military approach to drug interdictions raises legal questions

The U.S. Coast Guard detects and detains scores of drug-running vessels in the Caribbean every year in its role as the world’s drug police on the high seas.

- By KonsTANTIN TOROPIN AND JOSHUA GOODMAN

MAURICIO VALENZUELA Bloomberg THE U.S. targeted a vessel off Venezuela on Sept. 2. Above, the USS Lake Erie in the Panama Canal locks.

Now, that anti-narcotics mission may look vastly different after a U.S. military strike on a vessel off Venezuela. Trump administration officials asserted last week that gang members were smuggling drugs bound for America.

The Trump administration has indicated more military strikes on drug targets could be coming, saying it is seeking to “wage war” on Latin American cartels it accuses of flooding the U.S. with cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs. It is facing mounting questions, however, about the legality of the strike and any such escalation, which upends decades of procedures for interdicting suspected drug vessels.

“This really throws a wrench in the huge investment the U.S. has been making for decades building up a robust legal infrastructure to arrest and prosecute suspected drug smugglers,” said Kendra McSweeney, an Ohio State University geographer who has spent years investigating the legal infrastructure of U.S. drug interdictions at sea.

‘Immediate threat’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted while visiting Latin America last week that drug cartels “pose an immediate threat to the United States” and that President Trump “has a right, under exigent circumstances, to eliminate imminent threats to the United States.”

A U.S. official familiar with the reasoning also cited self-defense as legal justification for the strike that the administration says killed 11 members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, which has been dubbed a foreign terrorist organization. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.