On Saturday, the United States military blew up two boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Five people died. One survived. The U.S. Coast Guard was notified to search for them. Videos posted online showed small boats moving across open water before each was engulfed in a bright explosion.

The military said the boats were carrying drugs. It provided no evidence.

That is not unusual. Since September, the U.S. military has conducted dozens of similar strikes in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, killing at least 168 people. In nearly every case, U.S. Southern Command has stated that vessels were targeted along known smuggling routes. In nearly every case, the military has not provided evidence the boats were actually carrying drugs, or that the people on board were the narcoterrorists the administration claims to be targeting. A route. That is the standard being applied to a decision to kill people on international waters.

President Trump has said the U.S. is in armed conflict with cartels in Latin America. That declaration has never been authorized by Congress. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in the legislative branch, not the executive. The War Powers Act requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to hostilities and limits unauthorized military action to 60 days. These strikes have been ongoing since September. Congress has not voted. Congress has not been meaningfully consulted. And they continued on Saturday, the same weekend the U.S. military began implementing a naval blockade of Iranian ports after ceasefire talks collapsed, while simultaneously fighting a war in the Middle East.

The administration has justified the strikes as necessary to stop fentanyl from reaching American communities. But fentanyl is primarily trafficked to the United States over land from Mexico, where it is produced using chemicals imported from China and India. Maritime strikes on small boats in the Pacific are not targeting the supply chain that is killing Americans. The five people who died on Saturday have not been identified. No evidence has been presented that they were carrying drugs. No evidence has been presented that they had any connection to fentanyl trafficking. They are dead, killed by the United States military in international waters, and the public has been given nothing to evaluate whether those deaths served any purpose.

One hundred and sixty-eight people have now died in this program. Some of them may have been drug traffickers. Some of them may have been fishermen. Without evidence, without transparency, and without any accountability to Congress or the American public, there is no way to know. The five people who died on Saturday deserve at minimum to have their deaths justified by something more than a map coordinate on a smuggling route.

Sign this petition to demand Congress require the administration to provide evidence before conducting lethal strikes on civilian vessels in international waters, vote on whether to authorize the ongoing armed conflict with cartel targets in Latin America, and establish mandatory transparency and accountability standards for all military operations conducted under the narcoterrorism designation.