US is engaged in formal ‘armed conflict’ with ‘terrorist’ drug cartels, Trump says

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has determined that the United States is in now engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which the administration has deemed as “unlawful combatants,” according to a confidential memo obtained by ABC News Thursday.

It comes after recent U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean. 

The notice was sent to several congressional committees and was first reported by The New York Times.

The notice to Congress comes after the U.S. military last month carried out three deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. Two of those strikes were carried out on vessels that officials have said originated from Venezuela.

Independent legal experts have questioned Trump’s insistence that cartels should be treated the same as military combatants instead of criminals, which has always been handled by law enforcement and requires under law the protections of due process. One official on Capitol Hill said lawmakers are interpreting the notice as the administration “essentially waging a secret war against secret enemies, without the consent of Congress.”

The memo sent to Congress seemingly seeks to explain the United States’ rationale for striking multiple boats in the past month, which have resulted in several deaths of suspected drug smugglers. The memo states that Trump has “determined” that cartels engaged in smuggling drugs are “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.”

“Based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a noninternational armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” the notice said.

“Interdiction doesn’t work,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month when asked what legal authority the U.S. was using to justify striking the vessels in international waters. “What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”

The military strikes on small vessels off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks appeared to be an unprecedented use of lethal military force against a criminal enterprise. In the past, the U.S. government has relied on the U.S. Coast Guard and law enforcement personnel to board vessels for inspection. 

The notice to Congress cites a statute requiring reporting to Congress about hostilities involving U.S. armed forces. The memo states that the U.S. has reached a “critical point” where it must use force in self-defense and defense of others against ongoing attacks by designated foreign terrorist organizations.

The memo does not specifically name any one foreign terrorist organization. Trump has previously insisted that the boats targeted by the U.S. military recently were carrying massive amounts of drugs and were operated by members of the South American gang Tren de Aragua. 

The memo points to a Sept. 15 incident in which three people were killed on an alleged Venezualan boat and says the U.S. actions were in compliance with the law of armed conflict when it struck the vessel.

“The vessel was assessed by the U.S. intelligence community to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and, at the time, engaged in trafficking illicit drugs, which could ultimately be used to kill Americans,” per the memo, which goes on to say that although the strike was limited in scope, U.S. forces remain postured to continue carrying out military operations “as necessary” to prevent further deaths or injury to Americans by eliminating the threat “posed by these designated terrorist organizations.”

The rare U.S. military operations are a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s effort to stop the illegal flow of narcotics into the U.S. from Latin America.

U.S. officials have long claimed that Venezuelan cocaine shipments contribute to overdose deaths in the U.S. — and they accuse the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, of facilitating drug trafficking, which he denies. The Trump administration has placed a $50 million bounty on his head for his arrest.

Members of the Trump administration have claimed that designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations gives the executive branch the ability to go after criminal enterprises with the power of the U.S. military.

“It gives us legal authorities to target them in ways you can’t do if they’re just a bunch of criminals. It’s no longer a law enforcement issue. It becomes a national security issue,” Rubio said in an interview last month.

But some experts suggest the designation is legally murky. The Foreign Terrorist Organization designation does not typically constitute an authorization to use deadly force and is primarily a tool to restrict financial and material support to terrorist groups.

Democrats on Capitol Hill were caught off guard by the notice, which comes after weeks of lawmakers pressing the administration to seek proper war powers authority for such strikes. 

ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment.

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