Execution in the Caribbean

Beginning in September and continuing as recently as October 4, 2025, the United States has been summarily executing human beings traveling aboard boats in the southern Caribbean.  So far, 21 people have been killed. There have been no warnings, arrests, detentions, indictments, or trials. Rather, as videos released by the Trump administration show, the boats were destroyed, and the people killed, by weapon strikes delivered by an unknown branch of the United States military.  King Donald claims responsibility.

The Trump administration asserts that the killings are legal because the passengers were narcotics traffickers employed by cartels it has designated as “terrorist organizations.”  Therefore, the people killed were “unlawful combatants,” and under Article II of the Constitution, the president can order the use of military force to defend the country against direct threats.  The Trump administration has provided no evidence of its claims about the passengers; it has not offered even their names. 

Is Trump right?  Can he justifiably execute people he believes are trying to bring narcotics to the United States?  Legally and morally, the answer is no.  This article will focus on the moral question, with one point first about the legal analysis.  Specifically, the legal analysis requires exploration of (a) the breadth of a president’s powers under Article II; and (b) the meaning of the terms like “direct threat,” “defense,” and “unlawful combatants.”  The majority of legal scholars addressing these questions have concluded that Trump acted illegally. Encouraging as that conclusion may sound, it offers little hope that our judiciary will thwart Trump from additional unlawful executions.  This is primarily because even if the lower courts find that Trump acted illegally, the current Supreme Court is a tool of the Trump administration, and tragically, we cannot have faith that it would reach the obvious conclusion that, legally, Trump can’t act as judge, jury and executioner in one stroke.  As proof of this, one need only look to the Court’s recent distortion of law and obliteration of long settled precedent.  

Left judicially unsupported,  we cannot rely on an analysis of what is legal or illegal.  It becomes our duty as Americans, as human beings, to address Trump’s actions through a framework that considers humanity.  In other words, we as civilized human beings must determine what is right or wrong.  What do we as civilized human beings consider to be acceptable behavior?  What minimum standard of conduct must be maintained in order to ensure the dignity and, ultimately, the survival of human beings?  Here, with our own morality and common sense, we conclude that of course people should receive due process before being executed.  We must continue to denounce actions inimical to that conclusion.  Modern historical statements of Western values can help.  As discussed below, we have plenty of guidance by those who witnessed the horror of modern war and the brutal disregard of humane conduct.  

Basic Human Rights in Western Civilization

  In modern Western civilization, we have attempted, however imperfectly, to articulate our wish to minimize needless suffering of other human beings.  We find such attempts in, for example, the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.  Those conventions were created with the desire to avoid the infliction of needless suffering on human beings in the midst of conflict among sovereigns.  They were based on the Lieber Code, the military law that governed the wartime conduct of the Union Army during the American Civil War. 

Among other things, while recognizing the inevitability of war,  the Lieber Code nonetheless insisted on the prohibition of barbarism:    

The 1899 Hague Convention echoed the Lieber Code’s attitude that while war might be unavoidable, human beings engaged in war must nonetheless treat opponents humanely.  The preamble contains the following value judgments:     

The 1899 Convention went on to insist that the forces of belligerent parties, both combatants and non-combatants, have a right not to be killed and to be humanely treated as prisoners of war.”  Consistently, the 1907 Hague Convention prohibits “no quarter” (the practice of executing rather than imprisoning prisoners), as well as the killing of surrendered combatants.  

The Lieber Code and the Hague Conventions make sense.  They are attempts to codify our value judgments of right versus wrong in the context of our humanity.  They demonstrate clearly an abhorrence for unnecessary human suffering.  They demonstrate clearly the insistence that human beings be treated humanely even if they are combatants.    

Reiteration and refinement of these basic human values continued both post World War I and II and beyond, leading to the United Nations Charter.  The UN Charter is a treaty, and its members, including the United States, consider(ed) it to be binding law.  It requires that member nations not use force inconsistent with the purposes of the UN’s mission to maintain diplomacy and peace which, axiomatically, does not include the execution of persons who could have been captured.  

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a party, is another articulation that civilized peoples do not summarily execute one another.  The Covenant states that “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”  And the Maritime Law Enforcement Agreements (which pertain to cooperation in drug interdictions) commit signatories (including the United States) to respecting the fundamental due process rights of criminal suspects.  The word “arbitrarily” suggests that the United States may not in the same stroke act as judge, jury, and executioner.   This is bolstered by the fact that the U.S also is a party to other treaties regarding cooperation in drug interdiction.  

Fundamental Moral Values

 There is an obvious takeaway from these statements of minimum standards of human behavior.  It is that civilized people do not summarily execute other human beings, whether in wartime or in circumstances of suspected criminality.  The doctrines and treaties addressed above are incomplete, but they nonetheless reflect an abhorrence of simply killing people rather than capturing them.  Certainly, capture is more complicated and more expensive than murder.  Justice and humane treatment can be sticky and slow.  But we accept these complications because we believe that acting brutally makes us less human.  To be fully human, we must not murder people carelessly.  

Trump and his followers proudly acknowledge their impatience with the very notion of justice, with its vagaries and complications.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly conceded this when he told reporters that Trump ordered that the boats be “blown up” because “[interdiction] doesn’t work.”  The occupants could have been forced to retreat, surrender, and been taken prisoner.  Instead, Trump blew them up.  His social media posts revealed his excitement at using military power - his power - to blow up boats and snuff human life.  Trump’s glee is disgusting and flies in the face of the aforementioned historical articulations of minimum standards of human behavior.

One last point about the place of the rule of law within our moral framework.  While a president may take measures to curtail the criminal flow of narcotics into the country, such measures must comply with the rule of law.  We have made the moral and logical assessment that the rule of law is a linchpin of civilized society.  Without it, international relationships are unstable and conflicts more likely.  Orderly international trade and economic prosperity are threatened.  Chaos ensues and brute strength rules without regard to morality, peacefulness, and human life.  Blatant disregard of the rule of law jeopardizes the United States’ authority in the world with respect to human rights, trade, and in various other domains.  Trump’s Caribbean executions – delivered without warning or even a scintilla of due process, jeopardize the stability, peace, and prosperity of the country.

The executions are a tragedy for the victims, regardless of whether they were actually trafficking narcotics.  They are also a tragedy for us because they violate decency and the norms of civilized society.  A  civilized society does not execute people based on untested assertions by the executive.  A civilized society requires the arrest of people suspected of a crime.  A civilized society requires a trial wherein the government must advance evidence to prove the charges, and the accused has a chance to present a defense.  When Trump summarily skips these steps and executes people, he is declaring that civilized society is dead and that he is the law.  We are right to denounce this as barbarous and inimical to decent human society.  We will continue to do so.

Ann Arbor Indivisible will affirm our basic values at the No Kings 2 protest in Ypsilanti, Michigan on October 18. We hope to see you there!