Washington, United States—The seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a daring raid by US forces throws open questions about the operation’s legality, according to experts and top Democrats who say laws were broken in the process.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has defended the action, saying it was carrying out a law enforcement operation when American special forces swooped into Caracas in the dead of night and forcibly took Maduro and his wife out of the country early Saturday.
The couple were flown to New York to face “narcoterrorism” charges in a federal court over alleged ties to trafficking tons of cocaine into the United States.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday accused the Republican president’s administration of breaking the law.
“They went inside Venezuela, bombed civilian as well as military places. And it’s a violation of the law to do what they did without getting the authorization of Congress,” he said on ABC News show “This Week.”
At a post-raid press conference Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the operation as “largely a law enforcement function.”
“At its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice, and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job,” Rubio said.
On Sunday, the top US diplomat stressed that the operation did not require congressional authorization.
“It wasn’t necessary because this was not an invasion. We didn’t occupy a country. This was an arrest operation,” Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week.”
FBI agents were in Caracas during the operation and read Maduro his rights as they took him into custody, Rubio added.
‘Act of war’
On Sunday talk shows, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was among Democrats who challenged the operation’s legality.
“This was not simply a counter narcotics operation. It was an act of war,” Jeffries said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“This was a military action, and pursuant to the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war to authorize acts that take place in this regard.”
According to Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who is a law professor at the University of Michigan, the Maduro operation broke international law.
An international arrest of a person not living in the United States is normally done through an extradition request, she said.
“Instead, what we see happening here is a military rendition where we’ve got the military go into Venezuela, kill a reported 40 people, and then seize Nicolas Maduro to bring him out to face charges,” McQuade told MS NOW.
“The problem with that arrest is that it violates the UN Charter,” she added, noting the United States is a signatory of the United Nations’ founding document.
Panama precedent
However, Bill Barr, the attorney general in Trump’s first administration, expressed “a high degree of confidence” that Maduro would be convicted for drug trafficking—just as Panamanian strongman General Manuel Noriega had been after he was forcibly removed from power and taken to the United States following its 1989 invasion of Panama.
“All the legal arguments that have been raised really were… raised during the prosecution of Noriega, which was a very parallel situation,” Barr said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Back in 1989, Barr wrote the government’s legal memorandum used to justify the invasion ordered by then-president George H.W. Bush.
Jack Goldsmith, a former senior official at the Department of Justice, meanwhile criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for doing nothing to check Trump’s executive power.
“Here is the reality. Congress has given the president a gargantuan global military force with few constraints and is AWOL in overseeing what the president does with it,” Goldsmith said in a blog post.
“Courts won’t get involved in reviewing unilateral presidential uses of force. And no country plausibly could stop the US action in Venezuela,” he wrote, noting “there are few if any effective legal constraints on unilateral presidential uses of force.”
