Can Trump just shoot and kill suspected drug traffickers in Mexican territory to stop them from entering the US?

Last edited Thu Sep 4, 2025, 05:55 PM - Edit history (1)

The Washington Post @washingtonpost 17h
U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the U.S. on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but President Trump chose instead to destroy it to send a deterrent message to traffickers.

...even though my suggestion of shooting across the Mexican border is mostly tongue-in-cheek, and unlikely because it's a country, and not an attack carried out on an ocean in front of them, this summary execution by the U.S. military on a speedboat reportedly carrying at least 11 people, ordered by Trump, is a chilling threat to any seagoing vessel in international waters that this president chooses to attack to 'send a message' to someone or the other.

In a very perverse and convoluted way, though, this justification offered by Marco for murdering 11 people in a boat in international waters may well be enough to skirt any question of Trump's authorization to order the summary execution, mostly because of the way courts and the present political balance of power has been so accommodating of this president's unilateral actions.

But, also because it's carefully devoid of any stated intention to directly attack Venezuela, or any inference or declaration that the U.S. is at war with the country led by the target of Trump's frequent demonizations, Maduro, despite his ordering the deployment of destroyers, a cruiser and an amphibious ready group with a Marine Expeditionary Unit to the waters outside of the country.



The reason the administration is refraining from any direct assertion that they are at war with Venezuela is that a wartime posture would open the U.S. to restrictions under international rules of engagement which would strictly prohibit the type of preemptive killing that Trump just authorized in ordering the attack by air on a vessel which wasn't a direct threat to the U.S., or against U.S. interests.

It also, most importantly, keeps Congress out of the authorization game, allowing the U.S. to keep waging this quasi-war against Venezuela under the pretext of interdicting drugs.

Even with the carefulness from Marco, though, it's going to be hard for Trump to insist that this was just a preemptive, defensive response to some clear threat to the U.S. - not only because the evidence is presumably destroyed by the attack - but because Trump's's made so many overt threats against Maduro's rule surrounding his deployment of lethal military forces right outside of their border.

Moreover, it's been the official assertion of the U.S. government, since the Biden administration, that Maduro's regime is illegal and must relinquish power to President-elect Edmundo González Urrutia.

Trump hasn't just been threatening drug traffickers, he's been calling out Venezuela by name, and equating the Maduro regime with the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, despite the finding from Trump's own intelligence agencies that no ties exist between the drug gang and the Maduro government.



That finding didn't stop Trump's DOJ from directly linking the two, most notably in the way they conflated each and every Venezuelan in the country with the drug gang without evidence in their effort to deport them; blocked, at least temporarily by an Appeals court halting Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport them without any court or administrative judgment at all.



I get that the U.S. doesn't recognize international laws, despite being a signatory to international agreements governing human rights abuses and violations; but we do use international law as the basis for the limits on our own domestic law enforcement's rules of engagement with civilians.


...Lawfare had a couple legal experts discussing this today. It deserves a watch and listen for anyone concerned with these murders and looking to understand the issues involved: