USS Sampson, a Navy missile destroyer, docks in Panama City, Panama, on September 2, 2025. Photo: Daniel Gonzalez/Anadolu/Getty Images.
By Misión Verdad – Sep 18, 2025
US media outlet The Intercept published details about the military operations ordered by the Trump administration in the Caribbean. According to the outlet, two explosive attacks against vessels and an assault on a Venezuelan tuna boat were reported.
The most recent update to the report, dated September 15, noted these events. However, on September 16, Donald Trump declared that three ships had actually been destroyed, although only two have been publicly revealed.
Within the government itself and in other institutional instances in the United States, statements have emerged that are inconsistent with the president’s version of events. These statements suggest that what happened has no legal basis and represent, in essence, a policy of aggression against Venezuela.
Statements from within the United States
Among the voices that have come forward, Democratic Representative Sara Jacobs stands out, warning of the seriousness of the actions taken by Trump and his administration.
“I’m incredibly disturbed by this new reporting that the Trump administration launched multiple strikes on the boat off Venezuela. They didn’t even bother to seek congressional authorization, bragged about these killings—and teased more to come,” she said.
In her opinion, the delegation of war responsibilities to the Executive has gone too far:
“For decades, Congress has wrongly ceded responsibility to the President about when to declare war, and now we’re living with those consequences. This is why it’s never been more important for Congress to reclaim our war powers responsibilities and ensure thorough oversight and transparency into all of the Trump Administration’s military actions.”
Along the same lines, Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced a resolution seeking to “terminate hostilities against Venezuela, and against the transnational criminal organizations that the administration has designated as terrorists this year.”
From the legal perspective, Sarah Harrison, a former Pentagon advisor and current analyst for the International Crisis Group, categorically questioned Trump’s narrative of the war. “A war framing confuses the issue. This is not a war,” she explained. “U.S. forces went out and committed murder,” she stated.
For Harrison, there is no justification that allows the use of force:
“There was no armed attack on the United States that would allow for the U.S. to use force in self-defense. There is no armed conflict between the United States and any cartel group or any Latin American country. A foreign terrorist designation of any of these groups does not change that. It does not authorize force against those groups.”
The jurist also emphasized the illegal nature of the events:
“The killing of all 11 of these men was illegal. This was a premeditated murder of suspected criminals—by definition, civilians—based on the facts provided by the administration themselves.”
In the same sense, she clarified that:
“Under domestic law, and it’s the same rule under international human rights law, the use of lethal force can only be executed if there is an imminent threat to life or serious bodily injury.”
Sarah Yager, former human rights adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and current Washington director of Human Rights Watch, echoed these assessments:
“I think this should be a real concern for everyone, that the rule of law is being undermined, and we don’t know what restraints there are on the use of force.”
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Civilians as targets and the disguise of drug trafficking
In the first attack announced by the United States, 11 people died after surviving the initial attack before being hit again. These were “suspected criminals—by definition, civilians,” as Harrison noted, confirming that they were not a legitimate military target.
In another incident, a Venezuelan tuna boat with nine fishermen on board was intercepted by a US Navy destroyer, which detained the crew for several hours before releasing them.
Regarding these operations, Donald Trump claimed that the actions were part of the fight against drug trafficking. “BE WARNED—IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” he wrote on social media when announcing one of the attacks.
Along the same lines, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was blunt: “Instead of intercepting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up, and it will happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now.”
These facts and statements reveal that what happened did not correspond to legitimate interdiction operations but rather to unilateral attacks against civilian boats. From a legal perspective, they constitute a violation of basic norms of international law and international human rights law, which prohibit the use of lethal force against civilians in the absence of an imminent threat.
The “fight against drug trafficking” narrative serves as a pretext: the attacked ships are presented as supposedly carrying drug shipments, but there is no proof of this or that they originated from Venezuela. In practice, it is a policy of aggression disguised under a justification that cannot be compared with the testimonies gathered within the United States.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SF
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
