To justify its deadly strikes on alleged drug-smugglers at sea, the Trump administration now claims that there are 24 designated terrorist organizations engaging in armed conflict with the United States, three government sources told The Intercept.

This new list of Latin American cartels and criminal organizations is attached to a classified opinion produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to support the administration’s argument that attacks on suspected drug-traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are lawful.

The list of groups supposedly engaged in “non-international armed conflict” with the United States includes the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua; Ejército de Liberación Nacional, a Colombian guerrilla insurgency; Cártel de los Soles, a Venezuelan criminal group that the U.S. claims is “headed by Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals”; and several groups affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, according to two of those government sources who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose classified information. The full list has not been disclosed, even to all lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee.

Of the groups now known to be on the list, there is no evidence that they are actually participating in armed conflict with the United States.

“The administration has established a factual and legal alternate universe for the executive branch,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. “This is the president, purely by fiat, saying that the U.S. is in conflict with these undisclosed groups without any congressional authorization. So this is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn’t even be in a war with.”

The U.S. military has carried out 17 known attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing at least 70 people. The most recent attack, on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea on Thursday killed three civilians. Military officials admitted to lawmakers that they do not know the identities of all the people on board a vessel before they conduct a lethal strike. Following most of the attacks, War Secretary Pete Hegseth or President Donald Trump have claimed that the victims belonged to an unspecified designated terrorist organization, or DTO.

“This is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn’t even be in a war with.”

Experts in the laws of war and members of Congress say the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians —........

© The Intercept