Yes, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice did author a classified memo over the summer of 2025 that provides the legal framework the Trump administration has used to justify lethal strikes on civilian boats suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. The memo, which runs more than 40 pages, advances the extraordinary legal theory that the United States is engaged in a non-international armed conflict with South American drug cartels, waged under the president’s Article II constitutional authority as commander in chief. Since September 2025, at least 36 strikes have been launched under this authority, killing at least 125 people, including named victims Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41. The existence and contents of this memo have drawn fierce criticism from legal scholars, former government officials, and civil liberties organizations.
Jack Goldsmith, who himself led the OLC under President George W. Bush, wrote that “there can be no conceivable legal justification” for the strikes. On December 9, 2025, the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit demanding the memo’s release. This article examines the memo’s legal arguments, the groups named as targets, the growing body count, congressional responses, the legal challenge now underway, and what this means for executive power going forward.
Table of Contents
- What Does the Secret OLC Memo Actually Say to Justify the Strikes?
- Which Cartels Are Named and Why the Designations Matter
- The Human Cost — Strikes, Deaths, and Named Victims
- Congressional Access and the Political Response
- The ACLU Lawsuit and What It Seeks
- Comparisons to the Bush-Era Torture Memos
- What Comes Next for Executive War Powers
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Does the Secret OLC Memo Actually Say to Justify the Strikes?
The memo’s central claim is that the president can order military strikes against civilian vessels carrying narcotics because the drug trade generates revenue for cartels that the administration has designated as being in armed conflict with the United States. Under this theory, narcotics aboard the boats are classified as lawful military targets, not because they pose an immediate physical threat to anyone, but because their eventual sale funds organizations the memo characterizes as enemy combatants. This is a significant departure from how armed conflict has traditionally been defined under both domestic and international law. Perhaps most alarming is what the memo says about casualties. According to people familiar with its contents, the document explicitly states that the fact that everyone aboard a targeted vessel will likely die does not make the boat an improper military target.
In traditional armed conflict, the laws of war require distinguishing between combatants and civilians, and they prohibit attacks where civilian casualties would be disproportionate to the military advantage gained. The OLC memo effectively sidesteps this framework entirely by categorizing the boats themselves, and by extension the people on them, as part of the armed conflict. The memo also purports to immunize U.S. personnel who authorized or carried out the strikes from future criminal prosecution. This immunity provision has drawn comparisons to the Bush-era “torture memos,” which similarly attempted to provide legal cover for government actors engaged in conduct that many legal experts considered plainly unlawful. The parallel is not lost on scholars who watched the OLC under the Bush administration stretch legal reasoning to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques, only for those opinions to be withdrawn and widely condemned in the years that followed.
Which Cartels Are Named and Why the Designations Matter
The memo names several specific organizations as parties to the alleged armed conflict. These include Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has expanded operations across Latin America; the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a Colombian guerrilla insurgency with decades of history; the Cártel de los Soles, a network reportedly embedded within Venezuela’s military; and several groups affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. The breadth of these designations is notable because it encompasses organizations with vastly different structures, goals, and relationships to the drug trade. However, naming these groups as parties to an armed conflict raises a critical legal problem. International humanitarian law, which governs armed conflicts, requires that the opposing party have a certain level of organization and that the hostilities reach a certain intensity before a situation qualifies as a non-international armed conflict.
Many legal scholars argue that drug trafficking operations, even large and violent ones, do not meet these thresholds. A gang or cartel engaged in smuggling is not the same as an organized armed group waging hostilities against a state in the way the law of armed conflict contemplates. The practical consequence of these broad designations is that virtually any vessel in the Caribbean or Pacific carrying drugs could theoretically be targeted, regardless of whether the people aboard have any actual connection to the named organizations. If the cargo alone makes the boat a military target, the identity of the occupants becomes legally irrelevant under the memo’s framework. this is what led one unnamed senator to tell the Washington Post that the memo is “broad enough to authorize just about anything” in terms of the use of force anywhere in the world.
The Human Cost — Strikes, Deaths, and Named Victims
Since September 2025, at least 36 strikes have been launched against civilian boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, killing at least 125 people. These are not strikes against military installations or fortified compounds. They are strikes against boats on the open water, vessels that may or may not contain drugs, crewed by people who may or may not have any meaningful connection to the cartels named in the OLC memo. Among the known dead are Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, killed in one of the strikes. Their names put a human face on what can otherwise feel like an abstract policy debate.
These were real people, killed by their own government’s military, without a trial, without charges, and without any opportunity to surrender or be taken into custody. Laws-of-war scholars have been direct in their assessment: the strikes constitute illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians, even suspected criminals, who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. The Defense Department’s own rules of engagement have historically reflected this principle. Jack Goldsmith pointed out that the Defense Department itself forbids conducting hostilities with the goal of ensuring there are no survivors. The OLC memo’s acknowledgment that everyone aboard a targeted boat will likely die, combined with its assertion that this does not matter, appears to be in direct tension with longstanding military doctrine. The gap between what the memo authorizes and what the laws of armed conflict permit is not a matter of subtle legal interpretation. It is vast.
Congressional Access and the Political Response
In mid-November 2025, the Trump administration allowed members of Congress and their staffs to read the classified OLC opinion. This is a common procedure for sensitive legal opinions that inform military and intelligence operations, though the circumstances here are unusual given that the strikes target suspected drug traffickers rather than traditional military adversaries. The congressional response has been mixed but telling. The senator who described the memo to the Washington Post as “broad enough to authorize just about anything” was flagging a concern that goes beyond the boat strikes themselves. If the president’s Article II authority can be invoked to wage armed conflict against criminal organizations that traffic drugs, the same logic could theoretically be extended to other criminal enterprises, other regions, or other types of targets.
The memo does not appear to contain meaningful limiting principles, which is precisely what makes it dangerous as precedent. Compare this to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which at least had a congressional vote and a specific triggering event. The OLC memo relies entirely on executive authority with no congressional authorization. The tradeoff Congress now faces is whether to challenge the administration’s legal theory through legislation, oversight hearings, or both. Some members may be reluctant to appear soft on drug trafficking. Others recognize that allowing the executive branch to unilaterally declare armed conflict against criminal organizations, kill civilians without due process, and immunize its own personnel from prosecution is a fundamental threat to the separation of powers, regardless of how one feels about the drug war.
The ACLU Lawsuit and What It Seeks
On December 9, 2025, the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking the immediate release of the OLC opinion. The suit was filed after the State Department, Department of Defense, and OLC all failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request within legally required timelines. The groups stated plainly: “The public deserves to know how the Trump administration has justified the outright murder of civilians as lawful.” The lawsuit faces significant obstacles. The government will almost certainly invoke national security classifications to resist disclosure, and courts have historically been deferential to executive branch claims of secrecy in matters involving military operations and intelligence. However, the FOIA lawsuit does not require the court to rule on whether the strikes are legal.
It only requires the court to determine whether the memo itself must be released. There is precedent for courts ordering the release of OLC opinions, including the Obama-era memo authorizing the targeted killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, which was eventually made public after sustained legal pressure. A critical limitation of the lawsuit is timing. Even if the court orders disclosure, the litigation could take months or years, during which the strikes may continue. The ACLU’s filing is as much about public accountability as it is about the legal process. By forcing the administration to defend its secrecy in court, the organizations are ensuring that the memo and the strikes it authorizes remain in public view.
Comparisons to the Bush-Era Torture Memos
The OLC boat strike memo has been widely compared to the infamous torture memos authored by the OLC under President George W. Bush. Those memos, written primarily by John Yoo and Jay Bybee, provided legal justification for “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions. Like the current memo, the torture memos relied on aggressive interpretations of executive authority, attempted to immunize government personnel from criminal liability, and were kept secret from the public for years. The comparison is instructive but also reveals how the current memo may go further.
The torture memos dealt with the treatment of detained individuals who were already in U.S. custody. The boat strike memo authorizes the outright killing of people who have never been detained, charged, or tried. The torture memos were eventually withdrawn and repudiated. Whether the same will happen with the boat strike memo depends largely on political will, judicial intervention, and public pressure.
What Comes Next for Executive War Powers
The OLC memo and the strikes it authorizes represent a potential inflection point for executive war powers in the United States. If the legal theory that the president can unilaterally declare armed conflict against criminal organizations stands unchallenged, it creates a framework that future administrations of either party could invoke to justify military action against virtually any non-state actor anywhere in the world. The memo’s lack of meaningful limiting principles is not a bug.
It is, by design, a maximalist assertion of presidential authority. The coming months will be shaped by three things: how the federal court handles the ACLU’s FOIA lawsuit, whether Congress takes legislative action to constrain the strikes or the legal theory underlying them, and whether the administration escalates or scales back the operations. For now, the strikes continue, the memo remains classified, and the families of at least 125 dead civilians have no public accounting of the legal reasoning their government used to justify the killings.
Conclusion
The secret OLC memo justifying the Trump administration’s boat strikes represents one of the most aggressive assertions of unilateral executive war power in modern American history. By classifying drug cartels as parties to an armed conflict, designating narcotics as military targets, and declaring that the certain death of everyone aboard a targeted vessel is legally acceptable, the memo has created a framework for lethal military action against civilians that legal experts across the political spectrum have condemned as unlawful.
The ACLU’s lawsuit, the criticism from former OLC officials like Jack Goldsmith, and the unease expressed by members of Congress who have read the memo all point to a legal theory that may not survive sustained scrutiny. But scrutiny requires transparency, and transparency is exactly what the administration has resisted. Until the memo is made public and its arguments can be tested in open court and open debate, the strikes will continue under a legal framework that the American public has never been allowed to evaluate for itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Office of Legal Counsel and why does its opinion matter?
The OLC is a division within the Department of Justice that provides authoritative legal advice to the president and executive branch agencies. Its opinions are treated as binding within the executive branch, meaning that once the OLC says something is legal, government personnel can act on that interpretation with the expectation that they will not face internal legal consequences.
How many people have been killed in the boat strikes?
As of the most recent reporting, at least 125 people have been killed in at least 36 strikes since September 2025. Named victims include Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41.
Is the OLC memo publicly available?
No. The memo is classified and has not been released to the public. The ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, and New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on December 9, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking its release under the Freedom of Information Act.
What legal theory does the memo use to justify the strikes?
The memo claims the U.S. is in a non-international armed conflict with several South American drug cartels, waged under the president’s Article II constitutional authority as commander in chief. It classifies narcotics aboard boats as lawful military targets because the drugs generate revenue for the named cartels.
Have any legal experts supported the memo’s reasoning?
The memo has faced broad condemnation from legal scholars. Jack Goldsmith, who led the OLC under President George W. Bush, wrote that “there can be no conceivable legal justification” for the strikes. Laws-of-war scholars have called the strikes illegal extrajudicial killings.
Can Congress do anything to stop the strikes?
Congress could pass legislation restricting the use of military force against drug trafficking vessels, cut funding for the operations, or hold oversight hearings to challenge the administration’s legal theory. As of now, members of Congress have been allowed to read the memo but no legislative action has been taken.