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Donald Trump’s administration has authorized the CIA to operate covertly inside Venezuela, marking a significant increase aggressive US military operations Against the regime of Nicolas Maduro.
The authorization reportedly allows the CIA to conduct “covert actions” against Maduro and his government, either unilaterally or as part of a larger military campaign.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he “authorized” the CIA operation because Venezuela had “emptied its prisons into the United States” and flooded the country with drugs.
Last month, the administration announced that the United States is Formally engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels According to a classified notice to members of Congress, the President has labeled them “unlawful combatants.” The notice appears to invoke extraordinary wartime powers to justify a series of missile attacks targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast and in the Caribbean, which have killed at least 27 people in recent weeks.
Trump said defense officials were now considering a “ground strike” in Venezuela.
“We are certainly looking at the land now that we’ve got the sea under control,” he said on Wednesday.
The latest action is as follows Another American air strike It destroyed a boat off the coast of Venezuela, which the president and administration officials say was targeting drug traffickers.
Critics have argued that the campaign amounts to illegal extrajudicial killings, while members of Congress and civil rights groups have been pressing the administration for evidence and legal memos have been shared among White House officials to justify the killings.
According to a statement from Jeffrey Stein, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, “All available evidence shows that President Trump’s deadly attacks in the Caribbean are outright murder.” “The public deserves to know how our government is legitimizing these attacks, and, given the stakes, immediate public scrutiny of its clearly radical principles is warranted.”
Trump did not explicitly rule out targeting Maduro and dismissed the question of whether the administration would take action against Venezuela’s elected leader as “ridiculous.”
“I don’t want to answer that kind of question,” he said Wednesday.
Trump and administration officials have repeatedly claimed that alleged drug boats are linked to Tren de Aragua gang members and “narco terrorists,” but have not publicly presented evidence as the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have shared videos of the attacks on social media.
Trump claimed that members of Congress “have been informed that they are loaded with drugs.”
“That’s what matters,” he said.
The President claimed that the boats were filled with “drug dust” and “fentanyl dust” when they were destroyed.
“We know that when they go out, we have a lot of information about every boat that goes out. Deep, robust information,” he said.
In January, Trump issued an executive order designating Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, paving the way for his order. Enforce the Alien Enemies Act Summarily deporting suspected gang members.
Neither the Alien Enemy Act nor the “foreign terrorist organization” designation permit lethal force.
According to the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization, the deployment of lethal force on suspicion of illegal activity “violates more than a century of international standards and the spirit of the United States’ own rules for maritime operations against civilian vessels in international waters.”
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino has accused the Trump administration of trying to “force regime change.”
“I want to warn the population: We have to prepare ourselves because the irrationality with which the American empire acts is not normal,” Padrino said in televised remarks last week. “It is anti-political, anti-human, anti-war, crude and obscene.”