On December 4, 2025, even as Congress demanded answers about the September 2, 2025 killing of two survivors of a U.S. missile strike in the Caribbean, the Trump administration bombed another small vessel in the Pacific, killing all four men aboard. It represents the 22^nd publicly acknowledged military strike that the Trump administration has ordered in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since September 2, 2025 and the 87^th death. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be impeached for all of them. The United States is not at war with drug cartels, speedboats and fishing boats on the open sea are not battleships, and Trump cannot classify civilians as combatants to justify killing them.

It has recently come to light that on September 2, 2025, U.S. forces intentionally killed two shipwreck survivors in a missile strike. U.S. forces, under the command of then-Joint Special Operations Command chief U.S. Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, launched a missile at a speedboat that carried a crew of civilians who were suspected by the Trump administration of being drug runners. The first missile killed nine crewmembers and left two unarmed survivors clinging to the burning wreckage of the boat for an hour. Admiral Bradley then ordered the second strike to kill both survivors. A news report asserts that Hegseth’s spoken directive prior to the missile assault was “to kill everybody.”

The killing of the shipwreck survivors is unambiguously unlawful, defying centuries-old standards and modern treaties that prohibit the wartime practice of “giving no quarter”; prohibit the killing of civilians and noncombatants; and provide protections for shipwreck victims in times of both peace and war. Article 60 of the Lieber Code of 1863 (written by Professor Francis Lieber and promulgated by President Lincoln), article 23 of the 1907 Annex to the Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, article 12 of the Second Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea, and Sections 5.4.7 and 5.9 of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual (updated July 2023). Indeed, the U.S. Department of Defense not only unambiguously prohibits “no quarter” warfare and attacks on noncombatants, it also imposes a duty on service members to refuse “clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations”—and sets out “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked” as an example of “clearly illegal orders.” (Section 18.3.2.1.)

But the gravity of the second missile strike should not overshadow the illegality and inhumanity of the first. Trump and Hegseth had no justification nor legal basis for killing any of the eleven victims of their September 2 attack. Nor is there any justification or legal basis for the killings that have subsequently been committed by the U.S. military in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. In total, the U.S. military has attacked twenty-two boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, purposefully killing at least 87 civilians, including the killing of four men in a strike carried out on December 4, 2025. Even as Hegseth attempts to distance himself from the second strike on shipwreck survivors, he has brazenly admitted to the administration’s campaign of extrajudicial killings. In one social media post, he wrote: “these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.” And he boasted in a November 28 social media post: “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

The Trump administration has refused to provide the American public with any information to support its assertions that the victims were drug runners or cartel members. But even if the administration’s allegations were true in every case, the victims’ purported crimes almost certainly would not warrant the death penalty, and neither Trump nor Hegseth has the authority carry out extrajudicial executions.

There are lawful, non-lethal mechanisms that U.S. law enforcement and the U.S. military can use to search ships suspected of carrying drugs and to make legitimate arrests. The suspects would then have the opportunity to defend themselves against criminal charges, juries and judges would have an opportunity to weigh evidence to determine culpability, and the Trump administration would be required to demonstrate that the searches, arrests, and prosecutions were warranted. Instead, Trump is evading the courts that might hold his administration accountable. He is pardoning actual drug traffickers, including Juan Orlando Hernández, former Honduran president who was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 45 years in prison for trafficking drugs into the United States and for taking money from cartel leaders and drug-trafficking organizations. And he and Hegseth are orchestrating and ordering extrajudicial killings and the sinking of speedboats and fishing vessels, along with any evidence that might have proved or disproved their allegations—or the innocence of the murdered men.

Trump has attempted to justify the killings by claiming that certain Latin American criminal organizations are carrying out “non-international armed conflict” with the United States and its members are “unlawful combatants,” though the administration has no plans to seek authorization for the use of military force,  refused to disclose the full list of targeted organizations even to all lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee, and has admitted that it is carrying out the lethal strikes without knowing the identities of the men it sets out to kill.

Trump cannot unilaterally decide that non-government criminal entities are at war with the United States; and he cannot justify extrajudicial violence against civilians by equating criminality with warfare. There are only two ways to interpret Trump’s repeated, deadly strikes. If the United States is at war—and it is not—then he is abusing the might of the U.S. military in order to commit war crimes. If the United States is not at war, then he is abusing the might of the U.S. military in order to commit murder.

Congress must do more than ask questions. It has a duty to impeach and remove Trump and Hegseth. Impeachment is necessary to prevent further or escalating violence against civilians, to stop Trump and Hegseth’s dangerous abuses of power, to protect the U.S. military that should never be ordered to commit unlawful killings or war crimes, and to uphold our Constitution and laws. And impeachment is necessary to remind the American public that the sanctity of civilian lives in times of war or peace must be unassailable, protected at all times, and defended even when the aggressor is the U.S. President and the Defense Secretary.