U.S. President Donald Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaks during a press conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 6, 2026.
President Donald Trump is pressuring a leading inter-American human rights watchdog to stop an investigation into Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s illegal attacks on supposed enemy boats.
By allegedly engaging in these extrajudicial killings in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, Trump has aroused the concern of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), according to an article The Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse published on Monday.
"What it is is murder,” Juan Méndez, an Argentine lawyer known for his work on behalf of political prisoners, told Turse. “You're deliberately shooting at people who may be engaged in illegal action. But if it is a law enforcement issue, then you cannot just kill them. You have to try to arrest them. You have to try to bring them to justice."
Ben Saul, a special rapporteur from the United Nations, said that "responding with lawless violence that flagrantly violates human rights" and added these "serial extrajudicial killings gravely violate the right to life.” Saul also added the strikes are illegal "under the law of the sea, under international humanitarian law, under international counter-terrorism law, or treaties targeting narcotics." Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, described Trump’s and Hegseth’s attacks as “in violation of international law on the use of force.”
While human rights experts like Méndez, Saul and Dakwar all agree that Trump and Hegseth are wrong to engage in extrajudicial killings, the IACHR has the power to investigate the United States and then make recommendations for claims against the United States to international courts.
“The State Department did not provide the total number of OAS programs that saw their funding cut or terminated, nor say how often the Trump administration has threatened to withdraw funding from the IACHR,” Turse reported. “Stuardo Ralón, the current president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, pushed back on the claims of bullying by the U.S. ‘There is no pressure from the United States on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,’ he told The Intercept.”
In January Trump was accused of committing war crimes when it was revealed the Department of Defense killed 11 people in September who were allegedly not an imminent threat, including in a second strike that reportedly killed two survivors seen clinging to wreckage of their downed vessel.
In December Business Insider's Kelsey Baker reported the second strike violated the Pentagon's own guidelines.
"The Pentagon's manual on the law of war doesn't list every possible illegal order," Baker pointed out, "but on some points, it's explicit. 'Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked,' it says, 'would be clearly illegal.' The 1200-page manual repeatedly stresses that a combatant who is unable to continue fighting is entitled to fundamental protections. It uses shipwreck survivors as a key example — which is why a September 2 counter-narcotics strike in the Caribbean is drawing intense scrutiny."
Baker added, "During the mission, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he watched live, the U.S. military struck a suspected drug-smuggling vessel twice. The first strike appeared to kill nine people on the vessel; then, the U.S. military launched a second strike on the stricken boat that killed the two remaining survivors, the Washington Post reported last week, citing seven people with knowledge of the strike."