The director of FBIKash Patel, demanded this Tuesday to treat drug trafficking organizations in the same way as terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
These statements by Patel in a Senate hearing come 24 hours after the US military carried out an attack against a second ship of alleged drug traffickers from Venezuela. A A figure that Trump raised this Tuesday to three vessels.
“The hunt for terrorist groups after 9/11 took a few years and this will be a mission that will last years,” Patel warned.
Along the same lines, the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Pete Hegsethnoted weeks ago that “a foreign terrorist organization that poisons its people with drugs from a drug cartel is no different from Al Qaeda, and will be treated as such.”
So far the Trump Administration has barely provided information about these attacks in international waters on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers.
In Monday’s attack, Trump claimed that three men were killed and that the ship was carrying drugs, although without providing any evidence for that claim.
The administration has also provided little information about a similar attack that occurred on September 2, despite demands from members of Congress that it justify the action. The Executive has alleged that those on board were members of the Aragua Train and that eleven people died.
However, the Government of Nicolás Maduro has assured that none of those killed in the first attack belonged to the Aragua Train.
The decision to blow up ships suspected of transporting drugs rather than seizing them and detaining their crews is unusual and echoes the United States’ fight against terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.
Trump’s critics see such actions in international waters as an example of Trump testing the limits of the law by expanding the scope of presidential power.
The United States Constitution requires that Congress, not the president, declare war.