No judge. No jury. Just execution.
The ABC7 I-Team is digging into the operations.
The Trump administration has deemed their targets "narco-terrorists" so dangerous the administration is attacking them like the would Al-Qaeda.
Protestors in Chicago have been denouncing the actions.
At a recent rally, one woman said, "The U.S. is killing people off the coast of Venezuela and Columbia. People who are just fishermen in small boats just trying to live. He says it's to stop drugs but we know that's a lie."
President Donald Trump says the kinetic strikes on boats in the Caribbean are carrying lethal amounts of drugs.
"There's a huge shift to a lot of the drugs coming back from South America and utilizing go fast boats and other vessels to get the drugs into the United States," said Mike Gannon, a former Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Chicago Division based in Indianapolis," said Michael Gannon, former ASAC at DEA-Chicago.
Gannon maintains those deadly strikes are decisive and necessary to combat cartels.
"With the border being appropriately shut down, they have to go resort back to continuing to utilize the Caribbean. And I think the biggest thing here, is it's an absolute game changer that the military is involved in helping going after these narco-terrorist organizations," he said.
Gannon told the I-Team this is an appropriate response and deterrent saying, "Think about the American lives that have been lost in the last decade. You're talking hundreds of 1000s of Americans have died because of drug overdose, poisonings and all types of drugs being altered with fentanyl."
READ MORE | US launches 3 strikes on alleged drug-running boats off Colombia, killing 14: Hegseth
But are the strikes legal?
"The administration has made the argument that they are acting, we are acting in self-defense against a terrorist organization that Venezuela will not or cannot control. If that case can be made out, it comes close to and maybe it does satisfy international law for this kind of action," said ABC 7 Chief Legal Analyst Gil Soffer.
But Soffer says if the strikes are illegal, there's little chance for accountability.
"The United States is not bound by the International Criminal Court. It's not bound by the International Court of Justice. There's really nothing that can be done to stop these actions," he explained.
In Chicago, anti-war activists continue pushing back on the government's narrative.
"This is not about drugs this is about homogeny. Venezuelan people refuse to subordinate themselves to US oil and energy giants, so our criminal administration has out them in our crosshairs," said Jae Franklin with the Anti-War committee Chicago.
Soffer also says a major question for debate is whether Trump has the unilateral power to approve military action like this without the involvement of congress, saying the issue has been hotly debated for generations and the Supreme Court has never resolved it.