For the third time this month, the United States military attacked a boat in the Caribbean Sea and killed suspected drug smugglers, President Trump announced on social media on Friday.
The attack killed three people aboard the vessel, which was in international waters, he said. Mr. Trump described them as “narcoterrorists” but did not offer more details, such as their nationality or a specific alleged criminal organization. He also posted a one-minute surveillance video showing a speedboat being blown up.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage en route to poison Americans,” Mr. Trump wrote.
The Coast Guard, with assistance from the Navy, has long treated drug smuggling in the Caribbean as a law enforcement problem, interdicting boats and arresting people for prosecution if suspicions of illicit cargo turn out to be correct.
Mr. Trump has claimed that he can instead treat drug smuggling as an attack on the United States and, as a matter of national self-defense, lawfully order the military to summarily kill drug-running suspects as if they were combatants on a battlefield.
A wide range of specialists in domestic and international law regulating the use of force have argued that Mr. Trump and Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, are giving the military illegal orders and causing Special Operations forces to deliberately target civilians — even if they are criminal suspects — in violation of murder laws.
A draft bill circulated this week within the executive branch and Congress would provide sweeping legal authorization to Mr. Trump to use military force against people, groups and nations he deems linked to narcoterrorism. It is not clear whether it could pass the Republican-controlled Congress.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration broke precedent when it began designating certain Latin American criminal gangs and drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
In July, he signed a still-secret order directing the military to begin using armed force against such groups, while stepping up rhetorical attacks on Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, whom his administration called a cartel leader. It also moved a huge amount of naval firepower into the southern Caribbean Sea.
Then, on Sept. 2, Mr. Trump announced that the military had attacked a vessel that he said was carrying drugs for a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, killing 11 people. On Monday, he announced a second such strike, which he said had killed three Venezuelans.
Moments after Mr. Trump announced the third strike on Friday, Democrats — whose reactions to the first two strikes swelled from frustration to outrage — criticized it as another illegal military action without congressional authorization. Among them was Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, who is pushing a war-powers measure that would direct Mr. Trump to cease the military operation.
“Blowing up boats in the Caribbean without any legal authority risks dragging the United States into another war, and provoking attacks against American citizens,” Mr. Schiff said in a statement.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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