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United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has warned that the International Criminal Court (ICC) could investigate US military actions in Latin America, including strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean decried by rights groups as extrajudicial killings.
Hegseth made the statement during a speech in Panama as he pledged to strengthen a military coalition launched in March with several Latin American countries to target drug cartels, whom the administration of US President Donald Trump has branded “narco-terrorists”.
On Wednesday, Hegseth said Colombia, under newly elected right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella, would become the 19th country to join the so-called Shield of the Americas, also known as the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC) or “A triple C”.
He called on all members of the coalition to reject the ICC, an appeal that comes amid an “all of government” effort by the Trump administration to “disable” the international tribunal.
Hegseth claimed that “the international left, along with their enabling left-wing media, is plotting to unlawfully assert International Criminal Court jurisdiction over US and partner military personnel and operations”.
“To be clear, there is no legitimate basis for the ICC’s lawless power grab that they will entertain anywhere they can in the world,” he said. “Our efforts in this effort are 100 percent lawful under the laws of armed conflict.”
The statements run counter to the position of many prominent rights experts and organisations who have decried US strikes on alleged drug smugglers as blatant violations of international law.
A report published by the Washington Office on Latin America in July documented that at least 221 people had been killed in the US strikes since September 2025. The authors described the killings as “murder under domestic law and extrajudicial killings under international human rights law”.
Monitors have noted a high likelihood that civilians, including fishermen, passengers, and victims of human smuggling, may have been killed in the attacks.
Hegseth, meanwhile, said the campaign has been a success, resulting in “record drops in movements of narco-vessels across major maritime corridors” in the Western Hemisphere.
That included “at a minimum, 65 percent reduction in the Western Caribbean, a 60 percent reduction in the Eastern Caribbean, and a nearly 50 percent reduction in the Eastern Pacific”, Hegseth said.
“We have knocked the narco-terrorists in the maritime domain on their heels,” he said.
To date, the ICC has not announced any investigations into US military actions in Latin America.
More joint operations
The Pentagon chief also hailed the prospect of more joint military actions with Southern Shield members, following a joint operation with Ecuador in March said to target drug traffickers.
Amnesty International has said that civilians in the South American country faced attacks and abuses under the US-Ecuador campaign.
On Wednesday, Hegseth said that Honduras and Guatemala were “inviting the United States to partake in combined operations against narco-terrorists in their countries”.
He also said Colombia, under de la Espriella, had already requested that the US Defense Department “join Colombia in its fight against narco-terrorism, authorising joint military operations to destroy terrorist terror networks”.
The US State Department has already said it would seek to give de la Espriella, who was inaugurated last week, a $1bn “security package” to help Washington and Bogota achieve their “shared goals”.
De la Espriella, whose country this week was rocked by a deadly magnitude 7.4 earthquake, used his inauguration on Friday to pledge an “all-out war” on organised drug crimes and rebel groups.
The increasingly militaristic approach towards Latin America has aligned with the election of a slate of Trump-backed, right-wing candidates in the region. Beyond de la Espriella, they include Honduran President Nasry Asfura and Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori, as well as the elections in recent years of Argentina’s Javier Milei, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.
Panama’s president, Jose Raul Mulino, who spoke ahead of Hegseth on Wednesday, has also hewed close to the Trump administration on security issues, despite the US president’s pledge upon taking office to take control of the Panama Canal.
“The first enemy that we have is drug trafficking. Drug traffickers, and the branches of organised crime that this brings,” Mulino said during Wednesday’s event. “There’s never going to be a sustainable peace. If this enemy reaches and becomes bigger and stronger, it would disintegrate our societies.”
Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez has also remained closely aligned with Washington in the wake of the US abduction of former leader Nicolas Maduro, another action experts have called a blatant violation of international law.
She has recently said Caracas will move forward with a previous decision to withdraw from the ICC.
The US military approach comes amid a wider strategy by the Trump administration to assert Washington’s dominance over the Western Hemisphere. They have repeatedly touted a new iteration of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which US officials have dubbed the “Donroe doctrine”.
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