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Amid deadly strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and East Pacific, President Donald Trump is vowing that his administration will continue to attack drug cartels both on land and at sea — without a declaration of war from Congress.
While speaking to reporters on Thursday, Oct. 23, Trump addressed the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S., claiming that his administration’s actions had reduced illegal drug imports by sea to “less than 5%” of what they were before.
Now, Trump says his administration will turn its attention to drugs entering the country by land.
“The land is going to be next,” Trump said. “And we may go to the Senate, we may go to the, you know, Congress and tell them about it, but I can’t imagine they would have any problem with it. I think, in fact, while we’re here, if you go to Congress and you tell them about it, what are they going to do? Say, ‘We don’t want to stop drugs pouring in.’ ”
As he concluded his statements on initiating land-based attacks on suspected cartel members, Trump said that he would go to Congress and “tell them what we’re going to do,” and that lawmakers would “probably like it, except for the radical left lunatics.”
When asked by a reporter why he would not request a formal declaration of war from Congress, Trump said, “I’m not going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be, like, dead.”
The U.S. military has engaged in nine deadly attacks on boats suspected to be transporting drugs, according to CNN. At least 37 people have died in the strikes, per the outlet.
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Legal experts have called Trump’s authority to engage in these attacks unilaterally into question, according to the BBC. The U.S. Constitution is explicit that only Congress has the power to declare war, a check on the president’s role as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
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Others have raised concerns that Trump officials have provided little evidence that the people killed in these attacks are actually drug traffickers. On Wednesday, Oct. 22, the wife of Alejandro Carranza, a man who was killed while fishing off the coast of Colombia, denied that he had any link to drug trafficking in an interview with the AFP, per CBS News.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro also said that Carranza was innocent and that his boat was displaying a distress signal at the time of the attack, according to CBS News.
“Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to the drug trade and his daily activity was fishing,” Petro wrote in a statement posted in Spanish to his X account. “The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure.”
Department of Justice officials have reportedly written a classified memo offering a legal justification for the strikes, according to CNN. The brief reportedly argues that the president is “allowed to authorize deadly force against a broad range of cartels because they pose an imminent threat to Americans.” per the outlet.
