The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a venerable DC-based research and advocacy group defending human rights in the Western hemisphere, has just issued a new report detailing how the Trump administration has orchestrated the killing of 221 people in 63 US military strikes on small boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since September 2, 2025, when the lethal campaign began. 

[image:1 align:left caption:true]

There have been no new attacks since June 21, but the Trump administration has not announced an end to the campaign, which has taken the lives of citizens of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Trinidad & Tobago, including not only suspected drug traffickers but also fishermen, couriers, migrants, and people simply seeking to get from one place to another. Nor has it given any indication of plans for future strikes. That is in line with its posture throughout this campaign: failing to release information about the strikes or the campaign other than posting strike videos or a press release announcing each attack. 

The report, Killing Spree: Extrajudicial Execution in the US Boat Strike Campaign, takes a comprehensive look at the boat strikes, their harms, their costs, and potential paths forward. And it demonstrates what a dramatic departure the Trump administration's resort to lethal military force is from both earlier (and continuing) interdiction programs and from core American values. 

"The strikes have been so frequent that many Americans have grown numb to them," said Adam Isacson, WOLA’s director for defense oversight and a co-author of the report. "But we need to focus on these brutal killings because they affect the US role in the world, the fragility of international human rights norms, and the US constitutional order. Their potential harm goes far beyond the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific." 

The report discusses:  

• The scope, stated purpose, and death toll of what the administration calls "Operation Southern Spear," and how starkly the killings differ from the US military’s 40-plus years of maritime law enforcement operations. 
• The internal deliberations and legal maneuvers that the Trump administration underwent to start the boat strikes, over the objections of many national security professionals inside government—including an expansive definition of "terrorism." 
• Why the boat strikes amount to "murder" under US law and "extrajudicial executions" under international human rights law, and why—despite the secret Justice Department memo’s claims—they plainly violate congressional war powers as laid out in the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution. 
• The questionable quality of the intelligence used to target civilians aboard the boats, which relies on squishy terms like "affiliates" and does not require commanders to know who they are killing or even provide evidence that drugs are aboard the boats. 
• What we know about the victims, which reinforces concerns that the strikes are killing not just drug traffickers but impoverished low-level drug couriers, fishermen, migrants, and other unaffiliated passengers. 
• Options for holding people accountable, once it is possible to do so, for planning, ordering, and executing a patently illegal policy. This raises thorny questions about immunity, pardons, and illegal military orders—but as this report notes, the US criminal and military justice systems are not the only possible venues. 
• Other nations’ responses to the boat strikes: while a few hardline leaders have applauded the boat strikes, many others have been critical or sought to distance themselves from them. Some longtime allies have cut back intelligence-sharing to avoid being implicated in the US killings. 
• The strikes’ failure to deter drug trafficking, as evidenced by their lack of impact on street-level cocaine prices and purity in the United States, and by unchanged seizures at US borders. Cocaine produced in South America is evading the deadly maritime gauntlet.  

"The boat strikes have killed hundreds without due process, harmed US democracy, placed the US military in a terrible bind, and failed even to reduce drug trafficking," said Isacson. "We hope this report makes clear what a dark chapter in US history they represent and creates momentum for Congress to act." 

WOLA noted the cessation of strikes since June and suggested it was due not to rethinking the program but because the US Southern Command was busy responding to the June 24 Venezuelan earthquakes. 

"The boat strikes should never come back," said John Walsh, WOLA’s director for drug policy and a co-author of the report. "The entire policy needs to stop now, and the administration should rescind the orders enabling it. And then, at the earliest opportunity, it’s time to hold people accountable for breaking the law." 

That could include everyone from President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and other high administration officials to the members of the US military involved in killing unarmed civilian mariners and their passengers.