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

02:07operation governed by military rules of engagement. Retired Admiral and former Democratic Congressman

02:14Joe Seastak 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

02:28them, we had the capability to shoot the rudder so that it couldn't steer any longer. It would

02:34make it easy then for the Coast Guard debt to go aboard. And then the process always for them,

02:40if they found them, was that they would be arrested, and they'd have due process and go to a trial.

02:46That's the way it is. And it's primarily that, because these are civilians. And if there's one

02:53thing we learn, and it's actually in the handbook, the commander's handbook for the law of naval operations,

02:59is that we don't attack civilians. 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.

03:14By 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.

03:31You have to think of it this way. Every one of those boats is responsible for the death of 25,000

03:39American people and the destruction of families. So when you think of it that way, what we're doing

03:44is actually an act of kindness. But we did another one last night. Now we just can't find any.

03:52You know, it's the old story. We're so good at it that there are no boats. In fact, even fishing

03:57boats, nobody wants to go into the water anymore. Sorry to tell you that. But we're stopping drugs

04:04coming into America, if that's okay. We're stopping drugs at a level that nobody's ever seen before.

04:08Last year, we lost, I believe, 300,000 people. And that's not talking about the destruction to

04:17families. That figure of 300,000 dead Americans that President Trump is using to partly justify

04:23designating cartel members as unlawful combatants is greatly exaggerated, though. The Centers for

04:30Disease Control says the U.S. actually saw a drop in overdose deaths last year, with just over 80,000

04:37Americans dying. That's down almost 27% from the year before. Critics of the new designation say

04:45putting a new label on an old problem does not transform the problem itself, or grant U.S. presidents

04:51or the military expanded legal authorities to kill civilians. I think it's nonsense. And I say that

04:59because it's also harmful. What prevents someone from making in a foreign country a similar decision

05:05about something else? I mean, one might say we have 100,000 car accidents every year. Do we sue? Do we

05:12go after the automobile companies? I don't know that's a stretch. But you truly are changing some accepted

05:19international and national definitions of what hostilities are. And I think that's wrong. And I

05:28think it's harmful. And I believe this because where does it take you to the next step? Does that mean

05:36that we can go after them in a foreign country like Venezuela? Can we strike them here? It opens the door

05:42to that if this is accepted, let's say, by the Supreme Court as a new definition. Something you said there

05:47about the rules of, you know, if we change the rules and these are the Supreme Court accepts these new rules

05:53for unlawful combatants. Are we allowed to strike them here? I mean, in your mind, what? And obviously

06:00we're postulating here. But if we change those rules, does that free up local law enforcement to,

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

06:12Yeah, well, that kind of might just turn that slightly and say, does that legalize the military

06:17to do that? Because now they have become a law enforcement, so to speak, force here in America.

06:22And if there's anything our founding fathers did not want to have was have a military, you know,

06:29they didn't even want to have a standing army. And you will raise militias when you needed them.

06:35And appropriations could only be given for, I believe it was two years for the army,

06:40for the support of anything, because they want to make sure that we did not go that. And I think

06:46this is does not bode well, because of the ramifications, those I we haven't talked about,

06:53probably I thought about today, that it opens up. Look, you can sit back and say, yeah, but they're

06:58just bad guys. But no, once you just go after them, because they're a bad guy, unfortunate consequences

07:06can occur. Look, we went after Saddam Hussein. What did we do? We created ISIS. And we took away the

07:12blocking tackle on Iran. So no longer did they have to worry about Saddam Hussein, and they could

07:17go about mischief in the Middle East. People have to understand that militaries can stop a problem.

07:24We don't fix them. Another problem the military cannot fix is the issue of a lack of trust between

07:31the White House and its critics over the justification for authorizing the strikes on at least

07:37four suspected drug boats so far. From an intelligence officer standpoint, why are we seeing

07:43the final act of destruction, but not the lead up and the proof that says these guys are who we say

07:53that they are? Yeah, and so it's a great question. And because I'm not directly involved, I just got to

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

08:04classified means in order to collect the information. Anytime that we're doing

08:08intelligence collection, even if it's related to law enforcement, but particularly the military,

08:13the ICE, overseas, a lot of our sources and methods are classified. And so it's a challenge then to

08:21present the quote-unquote evidence or the information that we're going to use to target these individuals

08:26and then put it out into the public space because we don't want anyone to know how we're gathering

08:30this information, right? They could be coming from human sources, they could be coming from technical

08:34means that we don't want China to know about, those type of things. So I understand, though, in a free

08:40democracy how that is a challenge. I understand why, you know, the American people are like, listen,

08:46this is an open society here. If you're going to make these claims that these are bad people,

08:51then you owe it to us to show us why you think they're bad people and you're making these decisions.

08:55I get that from a conceptual standpoint, right? But from a national security standpoint,

09:01it's really, really hard to do. As of publication, most of the military actions aimed against the

09:07cartels labeled as foreign terrorist organizations has taken place at sea in international waters.

09:14And while it's certainly causing tensions, all of that will get ramped up even more if the strikes

09:20start taking place on land. President Trump says he may consider such actions in the future,

09:26a move which will no doubt ignite plenty more legal discussions and potential courtroom battles.

09:33For more reporting like this, download the Straight Arrow News app today.

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