Trump’s ‘unlawful combatants’ designation sparking legal firestorm

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00:00President Donald Trump says the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with

00:05some Central and South American drug cartels. So what does that mean? And why are so many

00:10military legal experts crying foul? In the last few weeks, the United States military blew up

00:19at least four suspected drug boats, killing at least 20 people. In a document sent to Congress,

00:26President Trump said everyone killed was an unlawful combatant taking part in a non-international

00:32armed conflict, or NIAC. The designation typically describes a situation when violence occurs between

00:39a country and a non-state actor or between two non-state actors. The United Nations says in

00:46order for a situation to be considered an NIAC, it must meet two criteria. The non-state party must

00:53be organized with a unified Central Command structure, and the violence between the parties

00:59must be sufficiently intense. In terms of what's happening today, the administration is using the

01:06language when they say unlawful combatants in an armed conflict. They're using this, the language

01:12that's codified in the international law of armed conflict, and under the same legal auspices that

01:22the Bush administration used after 9-11, particularly because this administration has designated cartels

01:30as a foreign terrorist organization. That gives them lawful right to go after, at least lawful right

01:35from an American perspective, to go after these organizations who the administration has said

01:39is in armed conflict with the United States. And there's actually a lot of freedom, if you will,

01:46or there's a lot of space for that action. As a result of those recent changes, the president

01:53is essentially moving the mission of international drug interdiction in the region from a law enforcement

02:00duty, typically performed by the Coast Guard with military support, to more of a direct military

02:06operation governed by military rules of engagement. Retired Admiral and former Democratic Congressman

02:14Joe Seastack says the move puts sailors in a difficult position.

02:18I've done drug interdictions down there. We always had a lead debt, a law enforcement detachment

02:23from the Coast Guard aboard. Now, we might have launched our helicopter, and in order to interdict them,

02:29we had the capability to shoot the rudder so that it couldn't steer any longer would make it easy then for

02:35the Coast Guard debt to go aboard. And then the process always for them if they found them was that

02:41they would be arrested, and they'd have due process and go to a trial. That's the way it is. And it's

02:47primarily that, because these are civilians. And if there's one thing we learn, and it's actually in the

02:56the commander's handbook, the commander's handbook for the law of naval operations, is that we don't attack

03:02civilians. I thought when I read about this, that this was wrong to do that.

03:08President Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, obviously don't see it the same way.

03:15By calling them unlawful combatants, the White House is putting these suspected drug smugglers

03:20in the same class as Al-Qaeda or ISIS terrorists. Instead of drone strikes, IEDs or armed assaults,

03:27though, this current enemy's weapon of choice is drugs. You have to think of it this way. Every one

03:34of those boats is responsible for the death of 25,000 American people and the destruction of families.

03:42So when you think of it that way, what we're doing is actually an act of kindness. But we did another

03:49one last night. Now we just can't find any. You know, it's the old story. We're so good at it

03:55that there are no boats. In fact, even fishing boats, nobody wants to go into the water anymore.

04:00Sorry to tell you that. But we're stopping drugs coming into America, if that's okay. We're stopping

04:06drugs at a level that nobody's ever seen before. Last year, we lost, I believe, 300,000 people.

04:14And that's not talking about the destruction to families. That figure of 300,000 dead Americans

04:20that President Trump is using to partly justify designating cartel members as unlawful combatants

04:27is greatly exaggerated, though. The Centers for Disease Control says the U.S. actually saw a drop

04:33in overdose deaths last year, with just over 80,000 Americans dying. That's down almost 27% from the year

04:42before. Critics of the new designation say putting a new label on an old problem does not transform the

04:48problem itself, or grant U.S. presidents or the military expanded legal authorities to kill civilians.

04:56I think it's nonsense. And I say that because it's also harmful. What prevents someone from making

05:03in a foreign country a similar decision about something else? I mean, one might say we have 100,000

05:09car accidents every year. Do we sue? Do we go after the automobile companies? I don't know that's a

05:14stretch. But you truly are changing some accepted international and national definitions of what

05:24hostilities are. And I think that's wrong. And I think it's harmful. And I believe this because

05:32where does it take you to the next step? Does that mean that we can go after them in a foreign country

05:38like Venezuela? Can we strike them here? It opens the door to that if this is accepted, let's say,

05:44by the Supreme Court as a new definition. Something you said there about the rules of,

05:49you know, if we change the rules and the Supreme Court accepts these new rules for unlawful combatants,

05:54are we allowed to strike them here? I mean, in your mind, what, and obviously we're postulating here,

06:02but if we change those rules, does that free up local law enforcement to,

06:07you know, shoot combatants on site because we're at war with them?

06:11Yeah. Well, that kind of might just turn that slightly and say, does that legalize

06:16the military to do that? Because now they have become a law enforcement, so to speak,

06:21force here in America. And if there's anything our founding fathers did not want to have

06:27was have a military, you know, they didn't even want to have a standing army.

06:32And you will raise militias when you needed them. And appropriations could only be given for,

06:37I believe it was two years for the army, for the support of anything, because they want to make sure

06:43that we did not go that. And I think this is, does not bode well because of the ramifications,

06:51those that we haven't talked about probably or thought about today that it opens up.

06:55Look, you can sit back and say, yeah, but they're just bad guys. But no, once you just go after them

07:03because they're a bad guy, unfortunate consequences can occur. Look, we went after Saddam Hussein.

07:09And what did we do? We created ISIS and we took away the blocking tackle on Iran. So no longer

07:15did they have to worry about Saddam Hussein and they could go about mischief in the Middle East.

07:20People have to understand that militaries can stop a problem. We don't fix them.

07:26Another problem the military cannot fix is the issue of a lack of trust between the White House and its

07:32critics over the justification for authorizing the strikes on at least four suspected drug boats so

07:39far. From an intelligence officer standpoint, why are we seeing the final act of of destruction,

07:48but not the lead up and the proof that says these guys are who we say that they are?

07:54Yeah. And so it's a great question. And because I'm not directly involved, I just got to speak from,

07:59you know, experience as an example. But yes, my assumption would be that they're using classified

08:05means in order to collect the information. Anytime that we're doing intelligence collection, even if

08:10it's related to law enforcement, but particularly the military, the ICE overseas, a lot of our sources

08:16and methods are classified. And so it's a challenge then to present the quote unquote evidence or the

08:23information that we're going to use to target these individuals and then put it out into the public space

08:28because we don't want anyone to know how we're gathering this information. Right. They could be

08:32coming from human sources. They could be coming from technical means that we don't want China to

08:36know about those type of things. So I understand, though, in a free democracy, how that is a challenge.

08:42I understand why, you know, the American people are like, listen, this is this is an open society here.

08:48If you're going to make these claims that these are bad people, then you owe it to us to show us why you

08:53think they're bad people and you're making these decisions. I I get that from a conceptual

08:57standpoint. Right. But from a national security standpoint, it's it's really, really hard to do.

09:03As of publication, most of the military actions aimed against the cartels labeled as foreign

09:09terrorist organizations has taken place at sea in international waters. And while it's certainly

09:15causing tensions, all of that will get ramped up even more if the strikes start taking place on land.

09:22President Trump says he may consider such actions in the future, a move which will no doubt ignite

09:29plenty more legal discussions and potential courtroom battles. For more reporting like this,

09:34download the Straight Arrow News app today.

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