Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticized the U.S. military strike on a Venezuelan drug cartel boat, warning that even suspected criminals deserve due process.
The strike, announced Tuesday by President Donald Trump, destroyed a vessel at sea and killed 11 members of the Tren de Aragua criminal group. Trump called the mission a direct hit on “narcoterrorists” linked to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
But Paul, who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, raised concerns in an interview Wednesday on Newsmax.
“It’s hard to have any sympathy for drug dealers trying to import product into our country,” Paul said. “But at the same time, I guess, you might ask the question, ‘Where does it end? Are we the world’s policemen?’”
The Kentucky Republican argued that if such a boat had been intercepted off the U.S. coast, the suspects would have been arrested, not killed.
“We all assume these people were bad people and drug dealers, but if they were caught off the coast of Miami, we would stop the boat,” Paul said.
“If they don’t shoot at us, we don’t shoot at them. They’re confiscated; they’re put in jail.”
Paul cautioned against what he described as unilateral strikes on individuals who have not yet faced trial.
“The entire point of our legal system is to not automatically assume guilt,” he said.
The senator warned that catastrophic mistakes could occur if innocent people were misidentified. He posed a hypothetical scenario in which “people fleeing Venezuela” might be targeted and destroyed by mistake.
“I think probably that we had the facts correct, we got bad people here,” Paul said.
“But … it isn’t our policy just to blow people up.”
“We don’t blow up ships entering our waters unless they’re hellbent on attacking another ship or unless they are resisting with gunfire.”
Paul reiterated that American justice demands trials, not immediate execution.
“We arrest people,” he said.
“So it is difficult and it’s hard, because obviously they’re bad people, so people want something bad to happen to them.”
“But typically, even the worst people in our country, if we accuse somebody of a terrible crime, they still get a trial.”
“They get a lawyer. They get their day in court.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the strike, saying long-standing policy of intercepting boats and seizing narcotics has failed.
Speaking Wednesday, Rubio said the United States has relied on “established intelligence” only to “stop” cartel boats for decades.
“It doesn’t work,” Rubio said.
He pledged that strikes like Tuesday’s will “happen again.”
Rubio also argued that cartels tied to Maduro operate as foreign terrorist organizations.
He said Trump is determined to use the full power of the United States to break their smuggling operations.
Newsmax host Rob Schmitt called the strike “a brilliant deterrent” against traffickers.
He told Paul, “But if we’re at war, you know, we blow up bad guys all the time.”
“I think they’re saying that it’s a war,” Schmitt said.
Paul pushed back, insisting that American law does not permit executions without trial.
“In our country, war is the exception. So when we have a war, it was intended that we would declare a war, there would be a big vote of our Congress,” Paul said.
“It’s a little harder here because this is a crime and this is a criminal syndicate…so listen, no love lost for the people who died that are trying to infiltrate our country with this filth, but at the same time you have to realize that it’s not as simple as it sounds…Sometimes you have to figure out who people are before you kill them,” he said.