New revelations that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally ordered Special Operations forces to kill every person aboard a suspected narcotrafficking boat in the Caribbean have accelerated a political and legal crisis surrounding the Trump administration’s covert maritime strike campaign. The Washington Post’s reporting on a directive to eliminate all 11 passengers, including survivors of an initial strike, has prompted former senior military legal officials to accuse Hegseth of “war crimes, murder, or both.” The allegations have opened a bipartisan oversight effort and raised fundamental questions about the use of lethal force outside conventional war zones.
According to the Post, intelligence analysts had determined that the passengers were allegedly transporting drugs toward the United States. Under past practice and international law, such a scenario would normally involve intercepting the vessel, seizing illegal substances, and arresting those on board. The new campaign took a starkly different direction. As the operation began, the directive Hegseth issued “was to kill everybody,” an intelligence analyst told the Post. When the initial missile strike left two people alive, a second strike was conducted to comply with that order.
The Former Judge Advocates General Working Group, a coalition of retired senior military lawyers, said that the September 2 attack and subsequent strikes were enabled by Hegseth’s “systematic dismantling of the military’s legal guardrails.” They argued, “Had those guardrails been in place, we are confident they would have prevented these crimes.” Their legal analysis described two potential frameworks for the order’s classification. If the administration is correct that the campaign is a “non-international armed conflict,” then instructions to “kill everybody” and to carry out a “double-tap” strike “are clearly illegal under international law. In short, they are war crimes.” If there is no armed conflict, the killing of “helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed” would expose those involved, “from [the defense secretary] down to the individual who pulled the trigger,” to prosecution “under US law for murder.”
The Working Group emphasized that “international and domestic US law prohibit the intentional targeting of defenseless persons,” and noted that the survivors of the September 2 strike “were rendered unable to continue their mission when US military forces significantly damaged the vessel carrying them.” In such circumstances, the law requires forces “to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners of war.” They concluded, “Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options.”
Concerns about the legality of the campaign were already building within the military. NBC News previously reported that Senior Judge Advocate General Paul Meagher, a Marine colonel at US Southern Command, objected to the planned boat bombing operations, warning they would expose service members to liability for “extrajudicial killing.” His warnings were ignored following Hegseth’s removal of Army and Air Force JAGs. Writer Ramez Naam said that Hegseth “telegraphed his intent to issue illegal orders the day he fired the JAGs,” referencing Hegseth’s explanation that the lawyers were dismissed to prevent “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.”
Hegseth publicly rejected the Washington Post’s findings as “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting,” claiming, “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law.” He did not deny issuing the orders described.
Congressional reaction has been swift. Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker and Ranking Member Jack Reed said they had “directed inquiries to the Department [of Defense]” and would “be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.” House Armed Services Committee leaders Mike Rogers and Adam Smith issued a similar statement. Democratic lawmakers described the reported orders as illegal. Senator Tim Kaine said the directive, if true, is “a clear violation of the DOD’s own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance. And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true.” Senator Mark Kelly called the order “clearly not lawful.” Senator Ed Markey wrote that “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.” Senator Chris Van Hollen said the reporting confirmed that the boat bombings were “extrajudicial killings” and insisted that “Hegseth needs to be held accountable.”
Several Republicans also acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations. Representative Mike Turner said, “if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that would be an illegal act.” Representative Don Bacon stated that “if it was as if the article said, that is a violation of the law of war,” though he added, “I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, kill everybody, kill the survivors, because that’s a clear violation of the law of war.”
The strikes have resulted in more than 80 deaths across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The administration has not released evidence that the victims were drug traffickers. The Associated Press identified among them “an out-of-work bus driver” and “a fisherman who had agreed to help ferry narcotics,” prompting one policy expert to compare the US actions to “straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
The controversy has become intertwined with the Trump administration’s strategy in Venezuela. Trump told Congress that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in the country, a claim used to justify lethal strikes, a CIA operation, and discussions about potential attacks inside Venezuela. Venezuela’s government called Trump’s declaration that he had closed surrounding airspace an “extravagant, illegal, and unjustified aggression” and a “colonialist threat.” Intelligence assessments, however, have not identified Venezuela as a primary source of drugs entering the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump announced his plan to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted by a US jury of conspiring to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine and who once said he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” Trump previously said in 2023 that had he won the 2020 election, he would have taken control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
The broader political tensions escalated when Trump demanded the arrest and prosecution of six lawmakers who appeared in a video reminding service members of their duty to refuse illegal orders. Trump described their actions as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” The White House later claimed he was not calling for executions, despite his explicit language and his reposting of a message advocating hanging.
Representative Seth Moulton criticized the justification offered for the second strike. Joint Special Operations Command had told the White House that the follow-on attack was needed because the damaged vessel posed a “navigation hazard.” Moulton called the explanation “patently absurd” and said, “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.”
The Former JAGs Working Group urged Congress to investigate the strike and called on the public “to oppose any use of the US military that involves the intentional targeting of anyone… rendered hors de combat (‘out of the fight’) as a result of their wounds or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them.” They added, “We also advise our fellow citizens that orders like those described above are the kinds of ‘patently illegal orders’ all military members have a duty to disobey.”
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