US boat bombings violate international law, UN human rights chief says

Claire Heddles, Miami Herald on Oct 31, 2025

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The Trump administration’s deadly bombing campaign of alleged drug-running vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean violate international law and should be investigated, the United Nations’ top human rights official said Friday.

“These attacks — and their mounting human cost — are unacceptable,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Friday. “The U.S. must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.”

Türk is also calling for “prompt, independent, and transparent investigations into these attacks.”

The rebuke comes after the U.S. military struck more than a dozen boats and at least one submarine, killing 61 people over the last two months.

The White House has insisted that the strikes are part of an effort to curb drugs coming to the United States, despite the fact that most drugs don’t come through Atlantic sea routes, according to government officials and reports.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly accused the UN of “running cover for evil narcoterrorists trying to murder Americans,” in a statement to the Herald. “The President acted in line with the laws of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring poison to our shores.”

The UN accused President Donald Trump’s administration of providing little to no evidence to back up its claims of “armed conflict.”

“Based on the very sparse information provided publicly by the U.S. authorities, none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force against them under international law,” Türk said Friday.

Starting in August, the U.S. military has sent war ships to the Caribbean, increasing its presence off the coast of Venezuela. The Trump administration has also selected targets for potential strikes in Venezuela, sources told the Miami Herald. The effort is widely seen as an attempt to topple Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, for whom the Department of Justice has offered a $50 million reward.

Trump denied plans for strikes inside the country when asked by reporters on Air Force One, en route to Mar-a-Lago, Friday.

Like the UN, Democrats in Congress have called the boat bombings “extrajudicial killings,” also citing a lack of evidence and because Congress did not authorize the strikes.

“Bombs on boats with no evidence, due process or Congressional authorization,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters in Sunrise Thursday. “Extrajudicial murder of Venezuelans is what Maduro does, it’s not what America should do.”

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