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REPORT: President Trump Declares U.S. Is Now In a Formal WAR With Drug Cartels
In a memo to Congress, President Trump has reportedly declared an official war on drug cartels!
Specifically, the brief memo said that the U.S. is now in a formal “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels in North and South America.
Check it out:
BREAKING: Trump admin tells Congress that US is now in ‘non-international armed conflict’ with drug cartels designated as terrorist organizations pic.twitter.com/prH6ATwUQl
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 2, 2025
BREAKING President Trump has decided that the U.S. is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to…
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 2, 2025
BREAKING President Trump has decided that the U.S. is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week — NYT
Fox News covered the story:
Since President Trump took office, drug cartels have rightfully been officially designated as terrorist organizations.
And, it’s not just talk. The Trump administration is taking serious action to treat dangerous drug cartel members as the terrorists they are.
As you probably know, President Trump’s war declaration comes after the U.S. military has already conducted several successful strikes on Venezuelan drug boats.
It also comes amid reports that the Department of War is preparing to strike drug labs inside Venzuela.
Fox News has more details on the memo:
The Trump administration sent a memo to Congress on Thursday saying that the United States is now “in a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, which administration officials have designated as “terrorist organizations.”
“The President directed these actions consistent with his responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to his constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to conduct foreign relations,” the memo states.
The notification to congressional lawmakers came as Democrats on key committees have accused the administration of exceeding its powers to use the military against the cartels, particularly in the wake of recent strikes on what the administration said were drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean.
“The cartels involved have grown more armed, well-organized, and violent,” the memo said. “They have the financial means, sophistication, and paramilitary capabilities needed to operate with impunity.”
“They illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year,” it continued. “Although friendly foreign nations have made significant efforts to combat these organizations, suffering significant losses of life, these groups are now transnational and conduct ongoing attacks throughout the Western Hemisphere in the form of organized cartels. Therefore, the President determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
The memo specifically cites the Sept. 15 strike.
The New York Times was the first to obtain the memo and provided more context.
Here’s more from the original NYT report:
The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by The New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered on boats in the Caribbean Sea last month, killing all 17 people aboard them, should be seen as lawful rather than murder.
Mr. Trump’s move to formally deem his campaign against drug cartels as an active armed conflict means he is cementing his claim to extraordinary wartime powers, legal specialists said. In an armed conflict, as defined by international law, a country can lawfully kill enemy fighters even when they pose no threat, detain them indefinitely without trials and prosecute them in military courts.
Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, said drug cartels were not engaged in “hostilities” — the standard for when there is an armed conflict for legal purposes — against the United States because selling a dangerous product is different from an armed attack.
Noting that it is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even suspected criminals — Mr. Corn called the president’s move an “abuse” that crossed a major legal line.
“This is not stretching the envelope,” he said. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”
Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a email that “the president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”
The Trump administration has called the strikes “self-defense” and asserted that the laws of war permitted it to kill, rather than arrest, the people on the boats because it said the targets were smuggling drugs for cartels it has designated as terrorists. The administration has also stressed that about 100,000 Americans die annually from overdoses.
However, the focus of the administration’s attacks has been boats from Venezuela. The surge of overdose deaths in recent years has been driven by fentanyl that drug trafficking experts say comes from Mexico, not South America. Beyond factual issues, the bare-bones argument has been broadly criticized on legal grounds by specialists in armed-conflict law.
The notice to Congress, which was deemed controlled but unclassified information, cites a statute requiring reports to lawmakers about hostilities involving U.S. armed forces. It repeats the administration’s earlier arguments but also goes further with new claims, including portraying the U.S. military’s attacks on boats to be part of a sustained, active conflict rather than isolated acts of claimed self-defense.
Specifically, it says that Mr. Trump has “determined” that cartels engaged in smuggling drugs are “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.” And it cites a term from international law — a “noninternational armed conflict” — that refers to a war with a nonstate actor.
“Based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a noninternational armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” the notice said.
What are your thoughts?
Do you support a formal war on the drug cartels who have been harming Americans for decades?
Is this what you voted for?
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