Republican Senator Rand Paul has strongly criticized the Trump administration’s military actions against Venezuelan vessels, likening them to executions carried out by China and Iran. During an interview with Fox News, Paul labeled these actions as “extrajudicial killings,” asserting that they parallel the executions of drug dealers by China and Iran, where individuals are executed without any public evidence being presented. He emphasized that such actions are fundamentally wrong.

Echoing these sentiments, Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona described the operations as “sanctioned murder.” The criticism arises amid reports from CNN that the Trump administration is considering new operations to target cocaine production and smuggling routes within Venezuela, as tensions with Nicolás Maduro’s regime escalate.

Venezuela has strongly condemned what it perceives as a “military provocation” by Trinidad and Tobago, allegedly in coordination with the CIA, aimed at inciting conflict in the Caribbean. The Venezuelan government further announced the arrest of a group of individuals it described as “mercenaries” with alleged CIA connections. This development follows President Trump’s approval of covert CIA operations against Venezuela. According to Maduro’s administration, these detained mercenaries were purportedly planning a “false flag attack” designed to initiate a larger confrontation, though specific details were not disclosed.

Since September, US forces have blown up ten boats and killed 43 people. A source close to Defense Secretary Hegseth says the strikes will continue until cartels ‘stop in their tracks.’ The deployment of the USS Gerald R Ford—the world’s largest aircraft carrier—joined the biggest US Caribbean force since the Cold War on Friday. Over the weekend, the USS Gravely docked in Trinidad and Tobago, just seven miles from Venezuela, for joint military training through Thursday.

Maduro has accused the US of ‘inventing a war,’ while his government condemned the drills as a ‘serious threat’ and ‘hostile act .’ Republican Senator Lindsey Graham voiced support for expanding operations ‘from the sea onto the land’ during a Face the Nation appearance. But Paul has been the lone Republican to highlight the lack of congressional authorization for this military campaign. ‘The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. The drug war is typically something we do through law enforcement,’ he told Fox News.

Paul said lawmakers have received ‘no information’—no names, no details on whether targets were armed. ‘A briefing is not enough to overcome the Constitution,’ he added. A legal source close to Hegseth compared the military authorization to ‘right to self-defense’ under the UN charter: ‘When you look at a boat filled with fentanyl, you have to look at it legally as if it were Al-Qaeda terrorists on a boat full of explosives.’ But Paul has made the point that the US government has provided no evidence that the targets were drug dealers.

‘No one said their name. No one said whether they are armed and we’ve had no evidence presented,’ he noted. The White House declared the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang ‘narco-terrorists’ and said Trump will use ‘every aspect of American power’ to stop drug trafficking . ‘Maduro is not a legitimate president. He is a fugitive head of a narco-terror cartel,’ a spokesperson told Daily Mail. Daily Mail reached out to the CIA for comment.