\n<\/p>\n
To justify its<\/span> deadly strikes on alleged drug-smugglers at sea, the Trump administration now claims that there are 24 designated terrorist organizations engaging in armed conflict with the United States, three government sources told The Intercept.<\/p>\n This new list of Latin American cartels and criminal organizations is attached to a classified opinion produced by the Justice Department\u2019s Office of Legal Counsel to support the administration\u2019s argument that attacks on suspected drug-traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are lawful.<\/p>\n The list of groups supposedly engaged in \u201cnon-international armed conflict\u201d with the United States includes the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua; Ej\u00e9rcito de Liberaci\u00f3n Nacional, a Colombian\u00a0guerrilla insurgency;\u00a0C\u00e1rtel de los Soles, a Venezuelan criminal group that the U.S. claims<\/a> is \u201cheaded by Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals\u201d; and several groups affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, according to two of those government sources who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose classified information.\u00a0The full list has not been disclosed, even to all lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n Of the groups now known to be on the list, there is no evidence that they are actually participating in armed conflict with the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cThe administration has established a factual and legal alternate universe for the executive branch,\u201d said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. \u201cThis is the president, purely by fiat, saying that the U.S. is in conflict with these undisclosed groups without any congressional authorization. So this is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn\u2019t even be in a war with.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. military has carried out 17 known attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing at least 70 people. The most recent attack<\/a>, on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea on Thursday killed three civilians. Military officials admitted to lawmakers that they do not know the identities<\/a> of all the people on board a vessel before they conduct a lethal strike. Following most of the attacks, War Secretary Pete Hegseth or President Donald Trump have claimed that the victims belonged to an unspecified designated terrorist organization, or DTO.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn\u2019t even be in a war with.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Experts in the laws of war<\/a> and members of Congress say the strikes<\/a> are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians \u2014 even suspected criminals \u2014 who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. The summary executions are a significant departure from standard practice in the\u00a0long-running U.S. war on drugs<\/a>, in which law enforcement arrested\u00a0suspected drug smugglers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, and other administration officials held a briefing with a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers who oversee national security issues for roughly an hour in a secure facility in the Capitol on Wednesday. Attendees said the administration\u2019s legal justifications didn\u2019t hold up.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump administration remains unable to provide any credible explanation for its extrajudicial and unauthorized military strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific. It was clear from this briefing that the administration\u2019s legal justifications are dubious and meant to circumvent Congress\u2019 constitutional power on matters of war and peace,\u201d said Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after attending the briefing. \u201cI continue to believe these strikes are illegal, and an enormous overreach of executive power.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pentagon has been withholding key information about the attacks and the list of DTOs for almost two months and has still yet to share all the relevant information with all lawmakers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I am glad to have finally been provided the OLC opinion to review, I continue to find it unconvincing and am concerned that the legal reasoning it employs could be used to justify a range of operations that, like the current operations, are deeply problematic,\u201d Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Intercept. \u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable that only a handful of Members are allowed to understand the Administration\u2019s interpretation of the law.\u00a0The Administration needs to immediately make the opinion and list of DTOs available for all of Congress to review so that we can conduct our constitutionally mandated oversight of the use of lethal military force.<\/p>\n Senate Republicans blocked a<\/a> war powers resolution<\/a> on Thursday aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Venezuela after a bipartisan group of senators warned <\/a>that the undeclared war on alleged drug smugglers in the region could escalate. The vote to advance the resolution failed with 49 senators supporting it and 51 opposing it.<\/p>\n The\u00a0resolution<\/a>, led by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., would have directed the president \u201cto terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.\u201d The resolution had 15 co-sponsors, including Sen. Rand Paul<\/a>, R-Ky.<\/p>\n \u201cIf colleagues believe that a war against the narco-traffickers in the ocean or a war against Venezuela is a good idea, then put an [authorization of military force] on the table and debate and vote it, but don\u2019t just hand the power over to an executive,\u201d Kaine said on Thursday. \u201cThat runs against everything that this nation was founded on.\u201d<\/p>\n The administration has no plans to seek an authorization for the use of military force\u00a0similar to the 2001 AUMF, which authorized counterterrorism operations by\u00a0the U.S. military against those responsible\u00a0for 9\/11,\u00a0Pentagon briefers told lawmakers last week. \u201cEven if Congress authorized it, this would still be illegal under U.S. and international law because we are not in an armed conflict with these cartels,\u201d Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee who attended a briefing on the strikes last week, told The Intercept<\/a>. \u201cAnd so this is just murder.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Six government officials, among them two who confirmed the count of 24 DTOs, who spoke to The Intercept over weeks expressed high confidence that most, if not all, of the boats targeted in the strikes have been smuggling drugs. Sources said the United States has been using top secret sensitive compartmented information involving human sources and signals intelligence, provided by the National Security Agency and the CIA, to inform the attacks.<\/p>\n Lawmakers still expressed concern about U.S. targeting procedures. Himes said he wasn\u2019t confident that U.S. forces are using the same \u201cstructure and architecture\u201d employed in past counterterrorism strikes during the war on terror\u00a0to prevent the killing of innocent civilians, and that\u00a0sufficient safeguards within the intelligence community may not be in place.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they cannot find a connection or show a connection with a DTO, then it goes to the law enforcement route with an interdiction. So that was their decision tree. But nailing them down more on what that connection is and how they show it and what they\u2019re looking for, we didn\u2019t get a lot of good information on that,\u201d said Jacobs. \u201cThey know how many people they killed, but they made it seem like they were not really doing any post-strike evidence gathering.\u201d<\/p>\n The people aboard the boats are hardly drug kingpins<\/a>. An investigation by The Associated Press into the lives of nine of those killed in U.S. strikes<\/a> found that while they had been smuggling drugs, they were not narco-terrorists or gang leaders but laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver, two were low-level criminals, and one was a local crime boss. All were from a desperately poor area, and most were crewing such boats for the first or second time.<\/p>\n Military briefers have admitted<\/a> to members of Congress that they cannot satisfy the evidentiary burden necessary to hold or prosecute survivors of the strikes.<\/p>\n Neither U.S. Southern Command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Justice Department, nor the White House would provide the list of 24 DTOs who it claims are engaged in secret wars with America. The count of 24, according to a single source, was first reported by CNN<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n