Pete Hegseth’s Extreme Plan on Where to Send Boat Survivors Exposed

The Department of Defense didn’t have a plan to deal with survivors after launching its boat bombing campaign in the waters around Central America.

The New York Times reports that after a mid-October strike in the Caribbean Sea left two survivors in U.S. military custody, Pentagon lawyers asked their legal counterparts at the State Department if the pair could be sent to the infamous Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, where the Trump administration had already sent numerous immigrants on shaky legal grounds.

Alarmed State Department lawyers quickly rejected that idea, and the two survivors ended up being sent to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. Later, on October 29, the Pentagon spoke with diplomats in the region regarding survivors from another strike, and decided that any that were rescued had to be sent back to their home countries or to a third county, but definitely not the U.S.

Why? The DOD wanted to avoid having any survivors in the U.S. legal system because Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other U.S. officials would have to present evidence in court to justify the bombings. The Pentagon has already admitted that it doesn’t know who is on the alleged drug boats it is bombing, which is why it hasn’t tried to prosecute any survivors.

At least some of the people on those boats have been identified as fishermen, and defense officials have not convinced many members of Congress of the legality and justifications for the strikes. Republicans and Democrats alike have criticized them, especially after the revelation that the military bombed survivors of the first boat strike back in September, a possible war crime. Now it seems that Hegseth and the rest of the DOD want to avoid any legal responsibility.