It Could Happen Here Weekly 252

Since September 2nd, 2025, the U.S. military has carried out at least 70 strikes on civilian vessels in the Caribbean Basin and Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least 234 people. The strikes, which began under Operation Southern Spear, target small boats called pangas or yolas—fishing vessels and transport boats that the Trump administration claims are operated by drug traffickers designated as foreign terrorist organizations. But the evidence gathered by journalists and human rights organizations tells a different story: the dead are mostly fishermen, motorcycle taxi drivers, and poor laborers from Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, and Caribbean nations, people who were either entirely uninvolved with drug trafficking or were low-level participants driven by economic desperation.

The Legal Architecture of Killing