Terrorists don’t deserve due process
Terrorists are responsible for bringing drugs into America and finally, we have an administration that is treating these savage organizations the way they should be, like terrorists.
On Tuesday, September 2nd, the United States military conducted an operation and destroyed a boat carrying 11 members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. Intelligence confirmed the boat was carrying a large quantity of illegal drugs and was headed to an unknown location in the Caribbean. All 11 Tren De Aragua terrorists were killed in the attack and it’s safe to assume the drugs would have eventually ended up in the United States.
The U.S. military destroyed the boat with a single Hellfire missile and since the attack, there has been a wave of criticism and people questioning the use of deadly force. Using the military to combat drug trafficking is not something we are used to seeing, but is it the right thing to do?
First and most importantly, Tren de Aragua (TdA) was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the United States Department of State on February 20th, 2025. In its announcement, the Department of State stated, “TdA is a transnational organization that originated in Venezuela with cells in Colombia, Peru, and Chile, with further reports of sporadic presence in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil. This brutal criminal group has conducted kidnappings, extorted businesses, bribed public officials, authorized its members to attack and kill U.S. law enforcement, and assassinated a Venezuelan opposition figure.”
TdA has worked hard to achieve the prominent FTO designation, just like Al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization most Americans are more familiar with. Groups that are designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations kill innocent Americans, are a threat to our national security and are therefore, treated as such.
While drug overdoses in the United States decreased 26.9% from 110,037 in 2023 to 80,931 in 2024, terrorist organizations like TdA bring poison into our country and kill Americans. To put that into perspective, according to the Global Terrorism Index, 7,555 people in the entire world died from terrosim in 2024. In 2024, someone died from a drug overdose in America every six and a half minutes.
America has a drug problem, that’s not a secret. Terrorists are responsible for bringing drugs into America and finally, we have an administration that is treating these savage organizations the way they should be, like terrorists.
If there was a boat of Al-Qaeda suicide bombers heading to the shores of the United States, do you think the military would pull the boat over and arrest the terrorists? Absolutely not. The boat would be obliterated and the terrorists would become shark food, just like the 11 Tren de Aragua terrorists that thought smuggling drugs was a good career choice.
It’s time for critics of the TdA boat attack to shift their way of thinking and fully understand what a terrorist organization is and does. Terrorists don’t get due process. Instead, they get taken off the planet by people who truly understand the threat they pose and every American should be thankful for that.
Chris Thompson’s column is published weekly on www.howiecarrshow.com and wwww.graniteeaglepress.com
