There is no obvious justification in American law for the use of lethal military force against an indicted drug trafficker.
Few will mourn the recent killing of Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores. Flores was the alleged leader of Tren de Aragua (TdA), better known by his alias, “Niño Guerrero,” who was killed at President Trump’s order in a “lethal kinetic strike” that U.S. armed forces fired at a building in Venezuela — as the president put it in a celebratory Truth Social post on Friday, which embedded video of the attack.
If Guerrero committed the crimes he was accused of, he was a murderous, evil man. But that’s just it: he was accused of crimes. There is no declaration of war or congressional authorization to use military force against TdA. The Trump administration has dubiously designated TdA as a terrorist organization, but as I have explained before, such a designation does not license the use of lethal force. Designation is a legal process that helps our government deprive foreign terrorist organizations of resources and prosecute — not kill — people who provide them with material support.
Guerrero Flores was under indictment in the United States for alleged criminal offenses. That gave the executive branch authority to arrest him, not to kill him (at least, not unless he resisted arrest in a manner that put agents in reasonable fear of serious bodily harm — in which case it would be permissible to use lethal force in response to the resistance, not due to the crimes charged). Narcotics trafficking is a crime, not an act of war against the United States, and thus the president has no unilateral authority to use lethal force against those suspected of committing it (wholly apart from the problem that an allegation and suspicion do not constitute proof of guilt). The U.S. State Department had announced a $5 million reward for his capture — i.e., as the Justice Department put it, for his “arrest and/or conviction” in court, not his killing.
It’s not just that a terrorism designation does not justify the use of lethal force. Even if it did, narcotics dealing is not terrorist activity as federal law defines the latter.
And while there are capital offenses in federal narcotics law, Guerrero Flores was not facing one. Obviously, even if a defendant is charged with a capital offense, the executive branch does not have the authority to put him to death absent a conviction on the charges, the imposition of the death penalty by a unanimous jury, and the affirmation of the verdict on appeal. But that wasn’t on the table in Guerrero Flores’s case. To again quote from the Trump DOJ’s December 2025 press release announcing the indictment:
GUERRERO FLORES, 42, of Venezuela, is charged with participating in a racketeering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison; cocaine importation conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life and a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison; and using and carrying firearms, machineguns, and destructive devices in furtherance of drug trafficking, which carries a maximum sentence of life and a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison.
The blunt fact is the president is killing people with no legal justification. There is no American war against Venezuela or against factions within Venezuela. There is no threat to the United States from Venezuela that would justify the military’s use of lethal force.
Even the rump of the Chávez/Maduro regime that the administration has co-opted in that country does not claim it is at war. The regime says the U.S. and Venezuela are combining forces to target organized crime in the country’s Bolívar state. The United States government has no authority to use lethal force to combat crime in another country, and the Venezuelan regime cannot grant the administration authority it has not been granted by the United States Congress.
I know, I know — I’m just a notorious apologist for terrorists and drug traffickers. You could look it up. But since Democrats, when they were in power, portrayed Trump supporters as terrorists, I might have thought we’d see the wisdom of our constitutional system of limited powers, in which a president cannot legitimately kill people by “designating” them — abracadabra — as terrorists.