US Congressman Gregory W. Meeks Demands Legal Justification For Strike on Alleged Drug Vessel in the Caribbean
NEW YORK, New York – United States Democratic Congressman, Gregory W. Meeks, is demanding answers from the Trump administration for the legal justification following the US Armed Forces’ strike on an alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean Sea earlier this month.
United States Democratic Congressman, Gregory W. Meeks“I am deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s shifting narratives, contradictory facts, and utter failure to provide a legal justification for this strike,” said Meeks, who represents New York’s 5th Congressional District in Queens.
The Ranking Member of the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, said it is “unacceptable” that, a week after the strike, members of the Foreign Affairs Committee have yet to be briefed by the administration on this use of force, despite the Committee’s clear jurisdiction.
Meeks, who formerly served as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said “we are a nation of laws, not of one man’s whims.
“Donald Trump does not have the authority to order strikes in international waters. Only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war or authorise military force. The administration must make its legal justification for these strikes clear, because this strike appears unlawful under both US and international law.”
Meeks said he also wants the Trump administration to provide Congress with the intelligence, including what immediate threat to the United States justified the extrajudicial killing of 11 individuals.
“Unjustified unilateral actions like this emulate the behaviour of authoritarian leaders, such as Maduro (the Venezuelan leader), rather than counter them,” he said.
“The Trump administration’s credibility is already in tatters, from deporting people to foreign gulags based on false claims and cherry-picking intelligence that suits its political agenda, to now contradicting itself about where the boat was heading when it was struck,” Meeks said, adding “the American people deserve the truth.
“With both the United States and Venezuela taking further escalatory steps, it is time for Congress to reassert its congressional authority over matters of war and peace,” Meeks said.
The US legislator said that Trump should not be allowed to “unilaterally drag us into a war that we have not authorised.”
Last week, Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar praised the US military strike on an alleged drug-carrying vessel in the southern Caribbean, which the White House said had killed 11 “narco-terrorists” who were part of the Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang.
She said she had “no sympathy for traffickers” and that the US military should “kill them all violently.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has called on the Trinidad and Tobago government to search for the remains of the 11 men even as police here are yet to identify the two bodies which washed ashore over the weekend.
Petro has since taken to his X account, referencing reports of fishermen’s fears in Trinidad and that it was “extremely important” that the government search for the remains of what he said were civilian dead.
