National Security & Human Rights
NewsOnScale Staff
October 28, 2026
On Tuesday October 27, 2026 the United States military struck a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean. At least five people were killed. The Pentagon said the boat was carrying drugs.
No evidence was provided. No suspects were named. No charges were filed. No trial was held. Five people are dead.
This was not an isolated incident. Since President Trump returned to office in January 2025 the United States military has conducted more than 70 such strikes in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean. More than 240 people have been killed.
Human rights advocates are calling them illegal extrajudicial killings at sea.
What is being done and under what authority
The Trump administration issued executive orders early in 2025 designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and directing the US military to use force against vessels suspected of drug trafficking in international waters.
The military does not need to present evidence to a court before conducting a strike. It does not need to prove the vessel is carrying drugs. It does not need to identify the people on board before killing them. The determination is made by military commanders based on intelligence assessments that are not publicly disclosed.
A boat is identified as suspicious. A strike is ordered. People die. The Pentagon issues a statement saying the vessel was carrying drugs. The statement is not accompanied by evidence. The evidence — if it exists — is classified.
What the law says
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
These protections have been interpreted by courts to apply to US government action against US citizens anywhere in the world. Their application to foreign nationals in international waters is a contested legal question — one that has not been resolved by any court reviewing the current strike program because the program's legal authorization has not been subject to meaningful judicial review.
International law — specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — places significant restrictions on the use of force against vessels in international waters. The right of visit allows a warship to board and inspect a suspected drug trafficking vessel. It does not authorize the destruction of the vessel and the killing of everyone on board based on a unilateral military assessment.
The number that matters
240 people killed in international waters by the United States military since January 2025. More than 70 separate strikes. No public evidence presented for any of them. No independent investigation. No accountability mechanism. No names of the dead published by the US government.
For context: the United States executed 25 people through its federal death penalty system between 2020 and 2026. Each execution followed years of legal proceedings, multiple appeals, and a judicial finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The military has killed 240 people at sea with no legal proceeding of any kind. The ratio is not 10 to one or 100 to one. It is effectively infinite — the legal process for the death penalty is measurable. The legal process for a boat strike is nonexistent.
What "without providing evidence" means
The Pentagon's statement that a vessel was carrying drugs is not evidence. It is an assertion. The distinction matters because assertions by powerful institutions have historically been wrong — sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately.
The US government asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It asserted that the Gulf of Tonkin attack justified escalation in Vietnam. It asserted that the aerial bombardment of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was a mistake that killed 42 people including medical staff and patients.
Assertions without evidence are not accountability. They are the absence of it.
In each of those historical cases the assertion was accepted by the press and the public long enough for the consequences — war, escalation, mass casualties — to become irreversible. The evidence, when it emerged, came too late to change what had already been done.
240 people are dead in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The evidence that justified their killing has not been presented to anyone outside the military chain of command that ordered the strikes.
The question of who is dying
The US government has not published the names of those killed in the 70-plus strikes. It has not published their nationalities. It has not published their ages. It has not published any information about whether any of them were actually engaged in drug trafficking or whether any of them were fishermen, migrants, or people on vessels that happened to match a suspicious profile.
Human rights organizations have documented cases of suspected fishing vessels being struck. They have documented cases of migrants attempting to cross international waters being in the vicinity of military activity. Without access to the classified intelligence that justified each strike there is no way for the public, the press, or the courts to evaluate whether any of the 240 deaths were justified.
The government that killed them is the only party with access to the information that would determine whether killing them was legal or justified. That is not accountability. That is impunity.
What this looks like from outside the United States
The United States has for decades positioned itself as the global champion of human rights, due process, and the rule of law. It has sanctioned countries, withheld aid, and launched military operations in defense of those principles.
A government that kills 240 people in international waters in 18 months without presenting evidence, without charges, without trial, and without naming the dead is not operating as a champion of human rights. It is operating as a government that kills people it decides should be killed and tells the public the dead were bad people.
That is the definition of extrajudicial killing. It is what the United States has condemned in other countries. It is what the United States is doing now.
The midterm context
These strikes are happening six days before the November 3 midterm elections. The administration that is conducting them is asking American voters to return Republican majorities to Congress — the same Congress that would have oversight authority over the military's use of force in international waters.
A Congress with meaningful oversight would demand evidence for each strike. It would require the administration to demonstrate legal authority for the program. It would hold hearings at which military commanders and intelligence officials would have to explain, under oath, how 240 people were determined to be appropriate targets for lethal military force without any judicial process.
That Congress does not currently exist. Whether it exists after November 3 is one of the questions on the ballot.
240 people are dead. Their names have not been published. The evidence against them has not been disclosed. The legal authority for killing them has not been reviewed by any court.
The Pentagon says they were carrying drugs.
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