Trump Declares Cartels ‘Unlawful Combatants’ in Secret War Memo

President Donald Trump has quietly notified Congress that his administration now considers Latin American drug cartels to be “unlawful combatants” in a “non-international armed conflict” with the United States.

The memo, first reported by the Associated Press and The New York Times, comes on the heels of US military strikes last month on three alleged smuggling boats in the Caribbean, which killed 17 people. Rights groups and legal scholars blasted those attacks as illegal, calling them extrajudicial killings.

The document offers the clearest look yet at how Trump is trying to legally justify the operations.

“Although friendly foreign nations have made significant efforts to combat these organizations, suffering significant losses of life, these groups are now transnational and conduct ongoing attacks throughout the Western Hemisphere as organized cartels,” the memo said, according to AP.

It continued:

“Therefore, the President determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”

The language expands on Trump’s framing of cartels as “narco-terrorists” bent on destabilizing the US, not just as profit-driven criminal gangs. The memo didn’t name names, but the administration has previously labeled several groups as foreign terrorist organizations — with particular focus on Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.

The constitutional rub? Only Congress can declare war or authorize military force. No such authorization currently exists for these strikes, leaving Trump to lean on broad executive power claims. That has sparked calls for lawmakers to reassert their war powers.

Some Republicans have applauded Trump’s moves. But Democrats and outside experts say the legal reasoning is flimsy. Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, posted on X:

“Every American should be alarmed that Pres Trump has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he labels an enemy. Drug cartels must be stopped, but declaring war & ordering lethal military force without Congress or public knowledge – nor legal justification – is unacceptable.”

On Bluesky, Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer now with the International Crisis Group, dismissed Trump’s logic outright. Referring to the administration’s claim that drug smuggling constitutes an “armed attack,” he wrote:

“‘Baloney’ is the technical legal term for that claim.”