Return of Trump's boat strike campaign reignites questions of legality, usefulness

The administration has resumed strikes after months of dormancy.

The Trump administration last week revived its controversial boat strike campaign targeting alleged drug-smugglers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific after months of dormancy, prompting a fresh round of scrutiny from critics who have panned the boat bombings as illegal extrajudicial killings.

A secret Justice Department memo that the administration has used as a basis for the campaign -- first known as Operation Southern Spear but now called Operation Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere -- gives the president broad constitutional authority to order the attacks in the national interest, sources familiar with the document told ABC News.

Some Democrats had expressed hope that the two-month pause in the strikes meant the administration had come to terms with what Sen. Tim Kaine , D-Va., called a "lack of effectiveness ... in reducing drug flow" in an interview with ABC News.

But a new round of strikes last week suggests that the administration is moving ahead with the polarizing campaign, which has killed at least 227 people whom officials allege are "narcoterrorists" over the course of almost exactly one year.

President Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the strikes have reduced the flow of drugs into the country by 98%, a figure the White House says reflects Customs and Border Protection's fentanyl seizure statistics. Critics, however, dismiss that as an irrelevant metric since the drug smugglers they are pursuing generally traffic other types of drugs, like cocaine.

"His administration's illegal and ineffective campaign of boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific has violated U.S. laws, failed to meaningfully stop drug trafficking, and legally imperiled U.S. servicemembers ordered to conduct these strikes," said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Tx., who has sent letters to the administration about the strikes.

In a statement to ABC News last week, U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the operations, said the new operation was "an evolution in our broader efforts" under Southern Spear, which began last Sept. 2 , to target the movement of illicit drugs.

A 'get-of-jail-free card'

To justify their strike operations, the administration has relied on and publicly cited a memorandum prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which it has kept secret despite pressure from lawmakers and civil liberties groups.

It is unclear whether the three strikes in international waters last week fit under the same targeting criteria and legal justification as the prior 63 strikes, which were officially a part of Operation Southern Spear.

But sources familiar with the memo told ABC News that the document grants the president and military commanders in the chain of command broad authority to order the boat strikes by characterizing the vessels themselves as the intended military targets, as opposed to the individuals aboard.

The vessels, which sources said the memo treats as facilities and lawful military targets, are prioritized as a part of SOUTHCOM's efforts to combat designated terrorists. Under the legal framework, casualties are expected, since a non-lethal option is not considered possible, the sources said.

In its public commentary on the strikes, which have generally been announced by the Pentagon on X, alongside video footage of strikes, the administration has repeatedly focused on the individuals in the boats, calling them "narcoterrorists."

According to Kaine, who has reviewed the memo and separate documents that lay out the military's boat strike campaign, permissible "narcoterrorist" targets include so-called allies or affiliates of designated terrorist organizations. Kaine declined to share any additional details of the memo with ABC News.

Intelligence on the strike targets does not need to positively identify people on the boat or locate narcotics aboard, Kaine said, based on his reading of the criteria.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department attorney-adviser during the Obama and first Trump administrations, criticized the memo as a "permission slip" for the administration.

It's essentially "a get-of-jail-free card to give the military comfort to engage in lawless premeditated killing" while not being "overly concerned that the duty personnel were going to face criminal prosecution," Finucane told ABC News.

Kaine, in a letter to the White House, said he believed the strikes have targeted people who are not involved in drug trafficking -- calling them "murder victims."

"No one from the Pentagon who has knowledge of this has looked me in the eye and said there are not civilian casualties," the Virginia senator told ABC News. "Aside from the White House spokesperson usually saying these are all narcoterrorists, I believe everyone in the Pentagon is aware that there are civilian casualties."

In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for the White House said the strikes have "not only eliminated narcoterrorists themselves, but also discouraged bad actors from trying to smuggle drugs into our country should they meet the same deadly fate."

A check on the 'administration's worst instincts'?

Prior to last week's strikes, which took place in international waters off the coast of South America, the most recent attack had occurred in late June. The U.S. Southern Command suspended the operation for eight weeks after earthquakes rocked parts of Venezuela.

Military leaders have said in recent weeks that the new operation would differ from its predecessor in at least two fundamental ways: It will involve closer coordination with regional allies and it will pursue more aggressive strategies to stem the flow of drugs, including land-based operations in places like Panama and Ecuador, where U.S. warships will be allowed operate from local ports.

Kaine said he welcomes the collaboration with 18 regional partners, which he said he hoped would act as a check on the "administration's worst instincts."

Marine Corps General Francis Donovan, the commander of Southern Command, said earlier this month that the purpose of Operation Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere is to "take the fight to the enemy."

SOUTHCOM officials said the latest strikes build on what they call "the successes of Operation Southern Spear, which employed precise kinetic strikes and maritime interdiction operations to disrupt illicit trafficking and undermine entrenched criminal networks."

Donovan visited Colombia and Ecuador last week, promoting the countries' cooperation with the U.S. anti-narcotics campaign. In a Friday night strike, U.S. sailors and Marines interdicted what SOUTHCOM called "a floating refueling station" that supported an alleged narcoterrorist organization. In coordination with the Ecuadorian government, U.S. forces cleared the vessel of individuals, who "were safely escorted to Ecuador," SOUTHCOM said on X. "Once cleared, U.S. forces sank the vessel," the command said.

'Boat strikes aren't the answer'

A chief concern among many congressional Democrats is whether or not the strikes have made a meaningful impact on the influx of drugs entering the U.S.

As part of its quarterly reporting functions, the Pentagon's internal watchdog wrote that Southern Command told oversight authorities it could not provide a "publicly releasable" measure for the effectiveness of the boat strike campaign on cartels' abilities to transport drugs to the U.S. The watchdog also said in its June report that the Pentagon's mission statement in Southern Spear was "classified."

Some senior military leaders have themselves acknowledged the limitations of the boat strikes.

During a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, Donovan said that "kinetic strikes will be one of the many tools, and probably not the most effective tool" in the counternarcotics mission.

Pressed by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Az., on whether the boat strike campaign "is actually degrading cartel operations rather than simply destroying some low-level assets and ... displacing some trafficking routes," Donovan said he "couldn't provide ... measures of effectiveness."

"Partner nations that I talked to had this exact same conversation," Donovan told Kelly.

Drug cartels, in the meantime, have adjusted to the threat to vessels on the water, increasingly ferrying narcotics via unmanned semisubmersibles -- drone submarines that navigate autonomously -- a former intelligence official told ABC News.

A senior U.S. official also said cartels have begun utilizing new smuggling routes. Boats are increasingly keeping closer to land borders, avoiding international waters where they could become targets of the strike campaign, said the official, who is familiar with the thinking of governments in the region.

"Looking forward, senator, the boat strikes aren't the answer," Donovan told Kelly in his March appearance, saying that the campaign's future operations would look to disrupt the entire system of trafficking networks.

The military's pivot to land strikes is in part a recognition that it's only a matter of time before cartels reinvent their methods to smuggle drugs, said the former intelligence official, who is familiar with the scope of the U.S. operation.

The inspector general's report also said that fentanyl, the deadliest drug in the United States, is not among the targets of the boat strike campaign -- undermining one of President Trump's most common refrains in promoting the strikes.