Consortium News: 23-10-2025,
After a hitch in the administration’s speedboat-killing operations, there are now living plaintiffs with standing to challenge the president’s authority, writes Andrew P. Napolitano.
U.S. Marines with the special-operations capable 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit conduct live fire drills aboard USS Iwo Jima in the Caribbean Sea on Sept. 17 in support of the U.S. Southern Command mission, Department of War-directed operations and the president’s priorities. (U.S. Marine Corps/Tanner Bernat/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
President Donald Trump’s use of the U.S. military to kill persons on speed boats in international waters, or in territorial waters claimed by other sovereign nations — all 1,500 miles from the U.S. — has posed grave issues of due process.
The U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of due process requires it for every person, not just Americans. The operative language of the Fifth Amendment is that “No person … shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
The Trump administration has claimed that it can kill whomever it designates as an unlawful enemy combatant — it prefers the political phrase “narco-terrorist” — and the due process it provides is the intelligence gathered by American spies and the White House analysis of that intelligence.
This secret analysis, the government’s argument goes, satisfies the president that the folks he has ordered killed are engaging in serious and harmful criminal behavior, and somehow is a lawful and constitutional substitute for the jury trial and its attendant procedural protections that the Constitution commands.