The US military is holding two survivors on a Navy ship after the US carried out a Thursday strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, according to three US officials.
The strike, which has not been publicly acknowledged by the Trump administration, was the sixth known strike on an boat allegedly involved in drug trafficking. But it appeared to mark the first time an attack had not killed everyone on board.
It is unclear what the US is going to do with the survivors being detained, the sources said.
US Southern Command, which is responsible for military operations in the region, referred CNN to the White House for comment.
Asked about what happened to the survivors of the strike during an event at the White House Friday, President Donald Trump did not address the status of the detainees but said that US forces had “attacked a submarine, and that was a drug carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs.”
“Just so you understand this was not an innocent group of people,” he said. “I don’t know too many people that have submarines, and that was an attack on a drug carrying loaded up submarine.”
It’s unclear under what legal authority the US military can hold the men, said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in war powers issues. The Trump administration has argued that the president has broad authorities under Article II of the Constitution to conduct the strikes against what it claims are “narco-terrorists,” but lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have questioned that theory. Congress, which maintains broad authority under Article I of the Constitution to declare war, has not authorized an armed conflict against drug traffickers.
The Bush administration advanced the theory that it could rely solely on Article II for its military detention authorities, Finucane said — but the Supreme Court never ruled on the matter, leaving the question of its lawfulness unresolved. The Bush administration was ultimately able to rely on a 2001 congressional authorization that deemed the United States to be at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates to hold military detainees.
The men held by the US Navy could hypothetically petition the courts to rule on the legality of their detention in what’s known as a habeas corpus claim, Finucane noted — a pathway followed by a number of detainees in the past that could reveal more information about the Trump administration’s secretive legal rationale for the strikes.
CNN’s Haley Britzky contributed to this report.
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