President Donald Trump said the two survivors from a U.S. strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs are being sent back to their home countries.
“The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution,” Trump posted on his social media platform on Saturday afternoon.
Trump said the vessel that was stuck was a submarine and said U.S. intelligence indicated it was carrying fentanyl and other illegal narcotics.
It was the sixth strike on a vessel in the Caribbean since the Trump administration ramped up operations there over the summer, which it says is necessary to stem the tide of illicit drugs coming into the U.S.
Repatriating the alleged drug traffickers avoids what could have been a messy legal battle for the administration and one that could have challenged Trump’s “war” against the cartels. Under the law, unarmed combatants held in military custody are allowed to protest their detention in court.
Trump has insisted that he has the legal authority to use lethal military force against drug cartels — as opposed to relying on law enforcement to interdict drugs — because he says the cartels fall into the same category as terrorist organizations that pose an imminent threat to the United States.
In a legal defense provided to Congress, Trump told lawmakers that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with the cartels and that drug smugglers are “unarmed combatants.”
Some legal experts have said such an argument is unlikely to hold up in court. However, it was unclear who would challenge Trump’s rationale in defense of the drug cartels, with few lawmakers speaking out against it and Trump continuing to expand military operations in the region in recent weeks.
The existence of survivors of the latest military strike could have forced the matter to go before a judge had either of the two survivors protested their status as “unlawful combatants.”
Sending the survivors to other countries essentially keeps the matter out of the court system.
Trump’s moves in the Caribbean have ratcheted up tensions in the region, most notably with the Venezuelan government, whose leader the U.S. does not consider legitimate. Earlier this week, Trump threatened to attack inside Venezuela, confirmed ongoing covert operations inside the country and ordered B-52 bombers off Venezuela’s coast.
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