Killing Spree: Extrajudicial executions in the U.S. boat strikes campaign
Executive Summary
Since September 2, 2025, top U.S. officials have posted 63 videos to social media, showing the moments when 221 people’s lives ended as the small boats on which they were traveling exploded, torn apart by bombs and missiles fired by the U.S. armed forces in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
After nearly 11 months, the Trump administration’s new video postings barely register in U.S. and regional news. Each attack is so similar to those that came before it that there is little “news handle” to grab onto. The boat strikes are blending into the background, buried under layers of newer crises distracting public opinion. After initial shock and outrage, the consequences of these illegal, lethal operations are becoming normalized.
This report explains why the U.S. government’s boat strikes are not normal and must never become so. They are murder under domestic law and extrajudicial killings under international human rights law. They are the result of the executive branch’s reckless use of the “terrorist” label to enable employing the U.S. military to target civilians. Their deaths come with no presentation of any evidence of wrongdoing, much less any due process for those being attacked. They must stop now, and those who have ordered and carried them out must be held accountable in all available venues.
The boat strikes are more than just a counter-drug strategy gone awry. They have grave implications for U.S. democracy, transparency, checks on executive power, and civil-military relations. They are emblematic of an aggressive, militarized reset of U.S. relations with Latin America that could set back causes that human rights, democracy, environmental, and anti-corruption advocates have defended for over half a century. They are a poor approach to drug policy, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how organized crime works and how to confront it. They pose a vexing challenge to the next U.S. administration.
Because the consequences of the boat strikes extend across so many areas, this is a lengthy report. We divide its narrative into nine distinct sections.
Section 1 explains the strikes’ scope, stated purpose, and death toll. Though the administration posts videos and general information about each attack, nearly everything else about what it calls “Operation Southern Spear” remains secret, including its mission and the reasons Defense Department officials opt for lethal strikes rather than ongoing, longstanding maritime law enforcement practices. This section discusses what we know about the military assets being employed and the operation’s cost so far, which rivals the annual amount of foreign aid that the U.S. government provided to the hemisphere before 2025, when the Trump administration cut it back dramatically.
Section 2 explains how the boat strikes fit within the Trump administration’s broader, more aggressive vision for U.S.-Latin American relations. This vision calls for a region-wide military offensive against what the administration calls “narco-terrorism,” with U.S. armed forces often at the forefront. This section summarizes what we know about the internal deliberations and legal maneuvers at the White House and the Department of Defense in the run-up to the strikes. At their core is a crucial document: a still-secret September 5, 2025, memo from the Department of Justice that seeks, through convoluted arguments, to compel the U.S. military to follow what are quite clearly illegal orders.
Section 3 explains the illegality of the boat strikes across several dimensions. The strikes fit firmly within the definition of murder under Section 1111 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, among other statutes. Under international law, they are extrajudicial executions. They are not “war crimes” because the United States is not at war. While the Justice Department’s memo contends that the United States is in an armed conflict with a secret list of criminal groups designated as “terrorist,” it is unconstitutional to involve the U.S. military in a conflict without congressional authorization. To get around that concern, the legal hair-splitting continues, with the argument that this “armed conflict” does not meet the definition of “hostilities” under war powers laws and therefore does not require Congress to sign off. The standing order to commit murder and defy constitutional war powers places the U.S. military in a difficult and dangerous position with potential domestic implications.
Section 4 discusses the questionable quality of the intelligence used to target civilians aboard the boats, none of whom were accused of committing a capital offense in the first place. Defense Department officials reportedly do not know the identities of many of the people they are killing, yet they consider them all to be at least “affiliates” of terrorist organizations, a broad term that could end up including people a few degrees removed from the criminal groups themselves. As a result, there is a high probability that some or most of those killed were passengers, migrants, trafficking victims, fishermen, or, at worst, impoverished low-level drug couriers.
Section 5 brings together what we know about the victims themselves; because of organized crime or repressive government control of their communities, loved ones, in most cases, have not been able to come forward and tell their stories. In Trinidad and Tobago, coastal Venezuela and Colombia, and elsewhere, portraits that emerge are of people who were not involved in drug trafficking at all, or, when they were, of many people who agreed to crew boats for modest pay out of economic desperation. Often, their stories confirm grave doubts about U.S. intelligence and targeting.
Section 6 discusses options for holding accountable those who violated the law by planning and ordering the boat strikes. The answer is not straightforward for uniformed personnel: they have a responsibility to disobey illegal orders, but the Justice Department’s memo—however spurious its arguments—has added a patina of legality to the illegal orders issued to them. Possible accountability avenues include the U.S. civilian and military justice systems; civil litigation on behalf of the victims’ families in U.S. courts; foreign courts seeking redress for their citizens’ murders; and international and inter-American bodies whose findings can reveal truth and build memory but cannot compel the U.S. government to punish officials or provide reparations. Accountability will be a struggle.
Section 7 explores other states’ responses to the boat strikes, their possible complicity, and the steps that at least some have taken to criticize the policy or avoid being implicated in it. Several Latin American governments have applauded the boat strikes, and some—notably El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago—appear to have lent logistical support. Others have voiced criticism, although several have undergone recent government changes that have brought to power leaders uncritical, or even supportive, of the policy. A few NATO countries—Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands—have taken steps to avoid sharing intelligence about suspected maritime trafficking that could enable a lethal U.S. strike.
Section 8 finds that despite the killing and the aggressive rhetoric, the boat strikes’ impact on the trafficking of cocaine, the main drug flowing from South America, has been slight to non-existent. Available information about cocaine markets in the United States and seizures at U.S. borders does not show the boat strikes “moving the needle” at all. Traffickers continue to have other options unaffected by the strikes, ranging from short-hop coastal boat trips to the use of container ships and overland routes.
Section 9 concludes with recommendations for institutions and actors in the U.S. government, other states, and international organizations. The overarching, immediate call to action is to cease the boat strikes and rescind all enabling orders right away. These murders on the high seas must end, and the United States must return to legality. Then, it will be vital to set in motion a series of measures, from accountability to institutional safeguards, to prevent the U.S. government from ever repeating this tragic mistake—and to prevent the boat strikes from ever being considered “normal.”