Trump tells the U.N. General Assembly the U.S. has struck dozens of cartel drug boats
President of the United States, addressing the U.N. General Assembly
“The cartels are the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere, not good people. They're enemies at war with civilization, using murder, rape, torture, and extortion as instruments of terror. … they should be killed, exiled, or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we're doing. To that end, the United States has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats, destroying 97% of the drugs coming into the ocean and sea.”
Source and context
Original post
About this source
Video clip of the passage from the President's U.N. General Assembly address, posted by the White House's Rapid Response 47 account. The quotation in this record is taken from the audio.
Official statement
About this source
White House summary of President Trump's September 22, 2026 address to the U.N. General Assembly, with excerpts of the speech. The excerpts do not mention the September 19 strike or Saul's briefing note.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Original post
About this source
Saul's own post releasing the briefing note, with a link to the OHCHR document.
Before the quotation
Trump addressed the 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2026, two days after Saul posted his briefing note.
After the quotation
The White House's published excerpts of the speech do not mention the September 19 strike or Saul's briefing note.
How this statement is classified
Case context: Was the U.S. military's September 19 Caribbean boat strike justified by evidence of narcotics trafficking?
The label describes this statement’s response within the context above.
Why this label?
Measured against the strikes and their stated basis, Trump treats the cartels as enemies at war with the United States and presents the boat strikes as part of that approach and as effective, which defends them.
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Was the U.S. military's September 19 Caribbean boat strike justified by evidence of narcotics trafficking?
Explore the case context, sources and public responses.
More from this case
Read the full case“Donald Trump is dropping bombs across the Caribbean and Pacific in blatant violation of the law and of fundamental human rights … This has done nothing to stop the flow of drugs or to make Americans safer. Instead, it has left hundreds dead, families devastated, and communities in fear. Let us call these attacks what they are: illegal extrajudicial killings.”Read statement
“All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores, and the President will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice”Read statement
“It finds that such attacks amount to serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life, being unjustified in national or personal self-defence or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions, or international counter-terrorism law. … even assuming that the vessels and crew attacked were members of the criminal groups listed as terrorist, such organizations have not mounted any “armed attack” on the United States so as to trigger a right of self-defence. … There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law.”Read statement