WASHINGTON, CMC – A Democratic Congresswoman has strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s military strike on a vessel that was allegedly carrying Tren de Aragua drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea.
“I strongly condemn the Trump administration’s lawless and reckless actions in the Southern Caribbean,” said Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs.
“Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche to ignore Congress’s clear Constitutional authority on matters of war and peace,” added Omar, the first African refugee to become a member of the US Congress, the first woman of color to represent Minnesota, and one of the first two Muslim-American women elected to the US Congress.
“From the video posted by the president and Secretary (of State Marco) Rubio, it appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked,” continued Omar, who was born in Somalia and whose family fled the country’s civil war when she was eight.
“There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force,” said the Vice-Ranking Member of the US House of Representatives’ Budget Committee.
She also serves on the House Education and Labor Committee, where she is a member of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections and the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).
“Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law,” said Omar, stating that the Trump administration is “now using the failed war on drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law.
“The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere,” she added. “It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations.
“What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels,” Omar continued. “It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing Presidents acknowledge this is true.
“Trump and Rubio’s apparent solution, to make it even more militarized, is doomed to fail,” she said. “Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes.”
On Tuesday, Trump disclosed on his social media platform that he ordered US Armed Forces to strike a boat that he claimed was carrying alleged Tren de Aragua drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea.
“You had massive amounts of drugs. We have tapes of them speaking”, said Trump in Oval Office remarks on Wednesday. “It was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people.
“You see it, you see the bags of drugs all over the boat, and they were hit,” he added. “Obviously, they won’t be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won’t be doing it again.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down, stating on Fox News: “We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing and who they represented.
“And that was Tren de Aragua, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States as trying to poison our country with illicit drugs,” he added. “Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a deadly terrorist will face the same fate.”
On an official visit to Mexico City on Wednesday, Rubio warned in a press conference: “We’re not going to sit back anymore and watch these people sail up and down the Caribbean like a cruise ship. It’s not going to happen.”
On Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro described, in a news conference, the US military build-up in the Caribbean as “an extravagant, unjustified, immoral and absolutely criminal” attack against his country that lies just off the southern coast of Trinidad and Tobago.
But Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar applauded the US attack on the alleged drug boat.
“I, along with most of the country, am happy that the US naval deployment is having success in its mission,” she said in a statement on Tuesday. “The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense.
“I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently,” Persad-Bissessar added.
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