That was Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), last Wednesday, questioning Adm. Kevin E. Lunday during the latter’s confirmation hearing to be the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard last Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Lunday answered, “Well, Senator, we're operating out there under our Coast Guard law enforcement authority as a law enforcement agency, a maritime law enforcement agency. And so that's not within our authority as a law enforcement agency during our Coast Guard operations under the Department of Homeland Security's authority.”
I begin with that exchange because to me, the heart of Lunday’s response – “that’s not within our authority as a law enforcement agency” – showed a senior military officer respecting the law under which he operates.
It also raises directly the question of under what law, or still-secret Justice Department interpretation of the law, is the Trump administration carrying out its destruction of alleged narco-trafficking boats and killing of crews – so far 21 boats and 83 dead crew members?
Before discussing, again, the legal issues surrounding the Trump administration’s military activity in the Caribbean, I want to lay out concerns about what the U.S. military is doing – beyond blowing up speed boats -- and how those actions, along with Venezuela’s reactions, could lead to a war no one wants.
On November 16, with the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, more than 15 percent of all deployed U.S. Navy warships are now positioned in the Caribbean Sea, a force greater than existed during the 1960s Cuban missile crisis. Remember, the earlier buildup included the USS Iwo Jima and its amphibious ready group with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) that has more than 2,200 Marines, MV-22 Ospreys, CH-53E helicopters, and landing craft.
Although U.S. Southern Command has said these forces are focused on counternarcotics efforts with regional partners, it has not commented or disclosed details on any other specific operations,
However, the New York Times reported Friday that “the U.S. Navy has routinely been positioning warships near Venezuela’s coast in locations far from the Caribbean’s main drug-smuggling routes, suggesting that the buildup is focused more on a pressure campaign against Venezuela than on the counternarcotics operation the Trump administration says it’s waging.”
At the same time, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported “multiple B-52H Stratofortress bombers [from Minot Air Force Base, N.D.] flew off the northern coast of South America on November 20,” on a “lengthy, nearly daylong flight, which a U.S. official said was a ‘presence patrol.’” At the same time that the B-52s were operating in the region, the U.S. also dispatched Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets from the Gerald R. Ford who then joined with a U.S. Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft, the magazine reported.
“All the aircraft, including the fighters, switched on their transponders for parts of the mission, making them visible [to Venezuelan radar] on flight tracking data,” according to the magazine.
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From November 16 through November 21, elements of the Marine Corps 22nd MEU along with Trinidad and Tobago Defense Forces held joint training exercises in both urban and rural environments across Trinidad and Tobago, which is just seven miles away from the Venezuelan shoreline. Operations took place during daytime and after dark, and some incorporated 22nd MEU helicopters.
Last Saturday, Trinidad and Tobago Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Barry Padarath said that joint military training with Washington will continue. “We have said, very clearly, that part of our mandate from the nation has been to restore peace and security,” Padarath said, “and therefore we are partnering with the United States and continuing these joint efforts.”
All these past activities, plus President Trump’s threats, have caused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to mobilize some 200,000 soldiers. With the announcement that the Gerald R. Ford was deploying to the Caribbean, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López raised the military alert levels in the country, according to El Pais newspaper. That meant, the newspaper wrote, “placing the entire country’s military arsenal on full operational readiness, as well as the massive deployment of land, air, naval, riverine, and missile assets; weapons systems; military units; the Bolivarian Militia; Citizen Security Organs; and the Comprehensive Defense Commands.”
Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday’s U.S. State Department designation of Cartel de Los Soles, the Venezuelan criminal group Trump claims Maduro controls, as a “foreign terrorist organization (FTO).” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said, “It gives more tools to our department to give options to the President,” and “nothing is off the table, but nothing is automatically on the table either.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and opponent of the attacks on alleged narco-trafficking boats, told Sunday’s CBS’ Face the Nation, “I think by doing this [naming Venezuela an FTO] they're pretending as if we are at war. They're pretending as if they've gotten some imprimatur to do what they want. When you have war, the rules of engagement are lessened.”
Looking at the political implications, Sen. Paul added, “I think once there's an invasion of Venezuela, or if they decide to re-up the subsidies and the gifts to Ukraine, I think you'll see a splintering and a fracturing of the movement that has supported the President, because I think a lot of people, including myself, were attracted to the President because of his reticence to get us involved in foreign wars.”
A CBS poll released Sunday showed just one in five Americans had heard a lot about the U.S. Caribbean military buildup, but of that knowledgeable group, 70 percent opposed going to war with Venezuela in the first place. In addition, 75 percent said Trump needed Congress’ approval before taking action in Venezuela, including just over half of Republicans.
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As for the legal side, Sen. Paul said, attacking boats “is really going against the rule of law in the way in which we interact with people on the high seas, and it has no precedent.”
At Wednesday’s hearing, Adm. Lunday gave the following explanation of how the Coast Guard legally carries out its non-lethal interdiction operations under maritime and U.S. laws.
“In the Eastern Pacific or the Caribbean or other locations, but principally in those areas,” Adm. Lunday explained, “we normally receive information. It could be from a surveillance aircraft or other means that there is a suspected drug smuggling boat that is headed north and then we will interdict that boat. We use an armed helicopter to disable the boat [by firing at their outboard engines] and then we will go aboard, seize the boat, and typically take a representative or take the samples, the cocaine that's on the boat if we can recover it. We'll destroy the boat as a hazard to navigation. Then we'll take the detainees who were operating the boat and we'll process them and…then arrest and then seek to prosecute.”
Lunday made clear “the helicopter interdiction tactical squadron which are…very specialized crews that do this work and they are trained and they're effective at disabling the engines. The time they would use lethal force was if they were fired upon from the drug smuggling boat under our mode of operating as a law enforcement agency.”
Near the end of last Wednesday’s hearing, Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) asked Lunday, “Admiral, yes or no. Does the US Coast Guard have a role in these military strikes on vessels in the Caribbean or Pacific?”
Lunday responded, “Senator, thank you for the question. So, under our Coast Guard Maritime Law Enforcement Authority, we're not involved in the Department of War’s operations that you're describing. That's under the Department of War.”
Asked by Sen. Lujan if he had been to meetings about the strikes on vessels, Lunday replied he had “not been involved in meetings regarding those military activities specifically,” and later added, “I have not had a conversation with Secretary Hegseth about these strikes. No, Senator.”
Sen. Lujan closed by saying to the non-present Pete Hegseth: “Mr. Secretary, if you're out there, if you're listening to this…If you've ignored the Admiral, give him a holler, pull him in, have a good conversation, and learn from this wise person.”
That’s not a bad idea.
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