Trump's Murder Spree Must Be Stopped |
If a president can murder civilians at sea and keep the legal justifications secret, we should all be concerned. The harm is even worse when basic factual evidence, such as full videos and orders, are also hidden from the American people.
Since September, the Trump administration has ordered 26 lethal strikes on civilian boats in international waters, killing 99 people and upending countless lives. The administration continues to push unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims about who these people were, despite investigations showing that some of those killed were fishermen just trying to make a living for their families. The administration also refuses to release the secret memo that purports to provide a legal justification for these killings, or the full, unedited videos of the strikes themselves.
The danger is not just the body count, horrific as it is. It’s the precedent: a president asserting the power to redefine civilians as “combatants,” and pretend he has the authority to grant advance immunity to federal officials for killing people. That is an egregious abuse of power with life-or-death consequences, and it will only stop if the courts, Congress, and the public make clear that this cannot continue.
Under both US and international law, it is flagrantly illegal to use the military to kill civilians suspected only of crimes. The United States is not in an armed conflict with anyone in Latin America. That means the people on these boats are civilians. Civilians, including those suspected of smuggling drugs, are not lawful targets. Just because The Trump administration says these strikes are firmly grounded in law doesn’t make it true.
Under both US and international law, it is flagrantly illegal to use the military to kill civilians suspected only of crimes.
The Trump administration is relying on a secret opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to justify these ongoing strikes. This memo reportedly details the Trump administration’s legal reasoning behind a couple of its totally incorrect conclusions: that the strikes are lawful because the United States is in an “armed conflict” with unspecified drug cartels, and that the officials who have authorized or carried out these strikes should not be prosecuted for murder or other crimes. Even as legal experts from across the political spectrum have debunked these claims, the administration has refused to release the OLC memo or any related records.
That’s why the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) have filed a lawsuit demanding the immediate release of the OLC opinion and related documents about these boat strikes. If the Trump administration is relying on an OLC opinion to justify killing civilians in international waters, the public has a right to read it. Our lawsuit argues that the government has violated the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to release any records, despite FOIA’s clear deadlines and the urgent public interest in understanding how the administration is attempting to legally rationalize ongoing killings. We cannot be a nation of secret laws.
The devastation wrought by the Trump administration’s secret legal reasoning is not hypothetical. On........