In January, the United States sent military forces into Venezuela, killing more than 50 people, to capture Nicolás Maduro to face federal charges. By even the most generous reading, that raid was legally questionable. A more honest reading sees it as an illegal use of military force to accomplish what the government itself treated as a criminal prosecution. But at least the administration still pretended that justice was the point.
Now even that pretense is disappearing. On Friday, President Trump announced that the U.S. military had killed Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the alleged leader of the Tren de Aragua gang, in a strike inside Venezuela. Before the strike, the government treated Guerrero Flores as a criminal suspect. The Justice Department had pursued his indictment and prosecution through lawful tools of the criminal justice system.
The administration, after months of killing alleged traffickers without public legal justification, has now taken the next step by using the military to kill an indicted criminal suspect instead of bringing him to trial.
The president is abusing military power. Worse, military leaders are enabling him. And unless they can explain, publicly and plainly, what lawful authority permits these killings, they cannot hide behind the justification that they are merely following orders. They are helping turn the military into an instrument for evading the rule of law.
The government’s charging document laid out a damning case against Guerrero Flores. It described a sprawling law enforcement investigation involving federal prosecutors, the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, U.S. Marshals, local police and foreign partners. It accused Guerrero Flores of terrible crimes: racketeering, drug trafficking, firearms offenses and support for terrorism. If those allegations are true, he was a dangerous criminal. But the document also made clear, as every criminal case must, that the charges were accusations and that the defendant was presumed innocent until proven guilty.
I have no sympathy for drug traffickers, cartels or transnational criminal networks. People who break the law should be investigated, arrested, tried and, if convicted, punished. But there is no legal loophole that allows the government to execute the accused because the accusation is ugly or the defendant is easy to hate.
The Trump administration has been evading that principle for months, using the military to kill more than 200 people without producing public evidence that any of them were lawful military targets. Now the logic has moved from unidentified men in boats to an indicted defendant in the criminal justice system.
U.S. military leaders should understand that distinction better than anyone. Officers are trained to know the difference between combat and law enforcement, between lawful targeting and unlawful killing. Yet those leaders continue to carry out killings the government has not publicly justified under any clear legal authority.
Civilian control of the military requires obedience to lawful orders, not blind participation in whatever form of violence a president chooses to rename as war. The word “lawful” is not decorative. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may order and defend this campaign, but they do not personally build target packages, launch aircraft or fire missiles. The military does that. That makes military leaders accountable participants, not background figures.
Every American should want to know whether the armed forces now accept that the president has the authority to transform criminal suspects into military targets by declaration, and if so, under what justification. That question does not stop at the water’s edge. Once a president can recast criminal law enforcement as war, the danger is not confined to Venezuela or foreign battlefields. A president already eager to use troops at home should not be handed a military precedent for turning crime into combat.
I understand that acknowledging this is uncomfortable. Americans are accustomed to showing wide deference to senior military leaders, treating them as dutiful public servants rather than possible enablers of presidential lawlessness. But respect for the military cannot require pretending it has no agency. If the armed forces are the instrument through which the president evades the Constitution, then the leaders of those armed forces must answer for their role.
Maybe senior military leaders have a lawful explanation for why the armed forces are killing criminal suspects instead of helping to bring them to justice. If they do, they should offer it. Publicly. Under oath. Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of U.S. Southern Command, Adm. Frank Bradley, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and other senior officers involved in these campaigns owe the country more than silence or classified assurances. Under what legal authority are they carrying out these strikes? What evidence turns a suspected criminal into a military target? What process exists before the government kills rather than arrests?
Perhaps this is not cowardice. Perhaps it is not careerism. But when military leaders refuse to explain why they believe continuing to kill criminal suspects is lawful, the country has every reason to conclude they cannot justify it. From here, it looks like a military leadership class choosing silence, obedience and career preservation over the Constitution it swore to defend.
The military has become one of the mechanisms by which the president is ignoring constitutional limits. The question under this administration has always been whether military leaders would refuse illegal orders when the test finally came. The record so far looks bleak.
If senior leaders can defend these killings, they should do so plainly. If they cannot, they should stop carrying them out or resign. And if they continue executing unlawful violence, accountability should not end with the president who ordered it. It should reach the military leaders who made it possible.
Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. He writes about leadership and democracy.
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