As President Donald J. Trump expands the US military build-up in the Caribbean, Democratic legislators are demanding that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate the US military’s strikes on suspected narco-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea as crimes.
Congressmen Ted Lieu of Los Angeles County and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday, Dec. 22, demanding that the DOJ open a criminal investigation into the Trump administration’s lethal military strikes in the Caribbean.
The members cite “deeply troubling reporting” that, on Sept. 2, 2025, following an initial strike on a small vessel in international waters off Venezuela, US forces carried out a second attack on two survivors clinging to the wreckage, raising “serious concerns that senior Defense Department officials ordered or condoned conduct that violates both the laws of war and federal criminal law.
“To be clear, the entire Caribbean operation appears to be unlawful,” they wrote. “Congress has never authorized military force against Venezuela; a boat moving towards Suriname does not pose a clear and present danger to the United States; and the classified legal memoranda the Trump administration has offered us to justify the attacks are entirely unpersuasive,” they added.
“Deliberately targeting incapacitated individuals constitutes a clear violation of the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which expressly forbids attacks on persons rendered helpless by shipwreck,” Lieu and Raskin continued. “Such conduct would trigger criminal liability under the War Crimes Act if the administration claims it is engaged in armed conflict, or under the federal murder statute if no such conflict exists.”
The lawmakers claimed that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has offered “shifting and contradictory” explanations for the Sept. 2 incident, including “claims of confusion due to the ‘fog of war’ and assertions that he delegated or did not personally issue an order to kill survivors.
“Issuing or executing a general order to kill survivors is unlawful under any circumstances and ‘acting pursuant to orders’ is not a defense when those orders are manifestly illegal,” they said. “Any suggestion that classified or prior Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memoranda could immunize the targeting of survivors after an initial strike is legally baseless.”
“Issuing or executing a general order to kill survivors is unlawful under any circumstances and ‘acting pursuant to orders’ is not a defense when those orders are manifestly illegal,” they said. “Any suggestion that classified or prior Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memoranda could immunize the targeting of survivors after an initial strike is legally baseless.”
The lawmakers said prior OLC opinions were limited to congressionally authorized armed conflicts against enemy combatants posing imminent threats—”conditions that are plainly absent here.”
Lieu and Rankin said that even conservative legal scholar John Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General and author of the “now infamous” OLC “torture memos”, which “condoned and defended torture by US officials, has said that the administration violated both federal law and the law of war.
“Outside of war, the killing of unarmed, helpless men clinging to wreckage in open water is simply murder,” they said. “The federal criminal code makes it a felony to commit murder within the ‘special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,’ which is defined to include the ‘high seas.’”
Lieu and Rankin said it is also a federal crime to conspire to commit murder.
Therefore, they are demanding that Bondi investigate Hegseth’s “apparent and serious violations of federal criminal law.”
Therefore, they are demanding that Bondi investigate Hegseth’s “apparent and serious violations of federal criminal law.”
In remarks from the Senate floor on Thursday, Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont raised alarm about Trump’s mobilization of National Guard troops, warships, and fighter jets to the Caribbean, urging the US Congress to enforce the War Powers Act before the United States embarks on another unauthorized war.
The senator emphasized that the Trump administration has not provided Congress with adequate information about its recent military strikes in the region, and demanded transparency and accountability for attacks that have killed nearly 100 people.
“The question is: Why are our warships, a carrier group, and support assets in the Caribbean? They are not there for drug interdiction. The reason they’re there is obvious, and it’s even acknowledged. President Trump wants Maduro gone. He wants regime change,” Welch said.
“As the president masses our forces for a war—as he and his associates have explicitly stated is one in which their goal would be the elimination of the Maduro regime—the president continues to refuse to come to Congress and seek Congressional approval for a military action, as is required under the War Powers Act,” he added.
“All of us as elected members of the United States Senate have vested in us, under the Constitution Article I, the responsibility and exclusive authority to declare war,” Welch continued. “Let us all accept our duty and demand that the executive be transparent, be accountable, and comply with the provisions of the War Powers Act and come to Congress for our approval of the military action that is clearly underway.”
Welch has urged the US Congress to reassert its constitutional authority and pass new legislation to prohibit the unauthorized use of US Armed Forces in hostilities in the Caribbean.
The senator also expressed strong opposition to Trump’s mobilization of the Vermont Air National Guard, alongside thousands of other US military units, to support Operation Southern Spear in the Caribbean Sea.
In October, Welch voted in support of a War Powers Act Resolution led by Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, to stop Trump’s “unconstitutional attacks” in the Caribbean Sea and urged the Senate to question Trump’s legal authority to take the United States to war.
In addition, Welch led every Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat in demanding answers from the DOJ about the legality of military actions ordered by Trump in the Caribbean Sea.
Under pressure to publicly release a video of a boat strike that killed survivors in the Caribbean Sea, Hegseth declined to do so.
Under pressure to publicly release a video of a boat strike that killed survivors in the Caribbean Sea, Hegseth declined to do so.
“Of course, we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters last Tuesday.
