Trump decides that the United States has entered into war with the drug cartels

U.S. President Donald Trump has decided that his country has entered into a “non-international” war with drug cartels and has labeled its members “unlawful combatants.” This is stated in a notice sent to Congress and leaked to several U.S. media outlets.

The move, first reported by The New York Times, comes after U.S. forces sank at least three boats in the Caribbean last month that were allegedly carrying drugs in international waters. The attacks left 17 people dead. At least two of the vessels had departed from the Venezuelan coast. A group of Democratic senators had demanded explanations from the White House in a letter regarding the legality of the attacks, reminding the president that, under U.S. war powers law, Congress must authorize any military action.

According to The New York Times, the confidential notice was sent this week to several congressional committees. It specifies that the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which the administration has declared terrorist organizations, and that traffickers belonging to those groups are “unlawful combatants.”

In an armed conflict, a nation may attack combatants of another even if those fighters are not engaged in combat at the time; it can detain them and subject them to military trials. By framing the campaign against the cartels as an armed conflict, the Trump administration appears to be trying to claim extraordinary war powers to justify the attacks on the boats in the Caribbean. Numerous experts and human rights organizations consider these attacks illegal.

On Thursday, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López denounced on Thursday the presence of five U.S. fighter jets flying near Venezuelan territory, specifically north of the country’s central Caribbean coast. “It is a provocation, a major threat against the nation’s security,” the general declared.

According to the AP news agency, Pentagon officials have not been able to provide a list of which organizations designated as terrorists are included in this non-international conflict — something that represents “a major source of frustration for some of the lawmakers” who were briefed, according to the sources cited by the outlet.

What the Trump administration laid out at the closed-door classified briefing was perceived by several senators as pursuing a new legal framework that raised questions particularly regarding the role of Congress in authorizing any such action, the person familiar with the matter said, according to AP.

The first attack was carried out on September 2 and was announced by Trump himself during an event in the Oval Office. At that time, the U.S. president claimed — without having presented public evidence so far — that the 11 people on board, all of whom were killed in the incident, were members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua.

The Trump administration added the Tren de Aragua to its list of foreign terrorist organizations earlier this year. The government argues that drug inflows into the United States have reached such a dangerous level that military action is necessary to stop them.

Nearly 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, though the majority of those deaths are linked to fentanyl use. Experts point out that most of that drug comes from Mexico, not Venezuela.

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