Maryknoll OGC joins letter opposing U.S. military action in Latin America

On August 15, 2025, the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns joined 36 civil social organizations in signing this letter to members of the U.S. Congress asking them to use their power to prevent the Trump administration from taking military action in Latin America.

We, the undersigned good governance, veterans, immigration, human rights, protection of civilians, and faith-based organizations, write to express our deep concern over reports that President Trump has directed the Department of Defense to use military force against criminal organizations in Latin America, including news that U.S. air and naval forces are now deploying to the Southern Caribbean Sea. U.S. airstrikes and military raids in Latin America would put people at risk of violence and destabilize hemispheric relations while hindering, not helping, efforts to protect communities from drug trafficking and other crime. We urge Congress to use the full slate of its powers to prevent the administration from launching unlawful hostilities in Latin America without democratic debate or public accountability.

Congress, not the president, has the constitutional role and responsibility to decide when, where, and against whom the nation uses force. Congress has not authorized the use of military force against criminal groups. As administration officials have acknowledged, Secretary of State Rubio’s designation of criminal groups in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) does notunlock exceptional wartime authorities. Nor is there an international legal basis for using military force in Mexico, Venezuela, or any other hemispheric country that refuses to allow the U.S. military to operate in its territory. Unilateral military action would blatantly violate the prohibition on the use of force under the UN and OAS Charters, and open the United States to international condemnation and isolation.

Violating Latin American countries’ sovereignty would damage vital regional partnerships. The United States maintains robust relations with the region’s governments that are integral to hemispheric stability and cooperation, including on trade, security, and migration – especially with Mexico, the United States’s largest trading partner. Ill-conceived and unlawful military operations would needlessly jeopardize these relations, as Latin American governments, already mindful of a long history of U.S. intervention in their countries, could limit or withdraw entirely from shared initiatives. 

Unilateral and hastily conceived military action could contribute to the considerable human rights abuses, criminal violence, and forced displacement already harming communities in Latin America. Militarized approaches to countering narcotics trafficking have often backfired. They have inadvertently incentivized criminal groups to traffic smaller and more potent drugs to evade interdiction, acquire deadlier weapons, and expand their networks of corruption to protect their profits. In Mexico, decades of domestic military deployment against drug trafficking organizations, supported with differing levels of U.S. cooperation, have witnessed dramatic increases in homicides and disappearances, as well as the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people by organized crime-related violence. Meanwhile, Mexico’s criminal groups have fragmented from fewer than 20 to more than 200. These militarized policies have all too often contributed to poverty, violence, and displacement across Latin America – issues that have led so many to seek refuge in the United States.

U.S. citizens and residents will not be able to avoid these and other human costs. Most immediately, over one million U.S. citizens live and work in Mexico and could be suddenly exposed to blowback of unilateral military action, including potential retaliatory violence. And U.S. servicemembers would, yet again, be asked to risk their lives to fight a problem that cannot be defeated through military means. Beyond this, Mexican, Venezuelan, and other Latin American immigrants living in the United States could find themselves pulled even further into an unlawful deportation dragnet. The current administration has already invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 against the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang to wrongly deport hundreds of immigrants, many of whom had no criminal record and were lawfully present. Military action against criminal groups abroad would only embolden efforts to abuse that archaic law. 

Meanwhile, U.S. communities deeply harmed by the fentanyl crisis would watch their government pursue a false solution to a painful challenge. Although deaths from fentanyl use remain distressingly high, they have fallen significantly in recent years, due in part to greater public education and readier access to life-saving interventions, especially naloxone. As Deputy Secretary of State and former Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau has written, targeting drug kingpins instead of addressing domestic demand through education and prevention programs is “a losing strategy.” Criminal groups can adapt to meet the high level of illicit drug demand within the United States. An entrenched and expensive military conflict would still leave users and their families vulnerable to harm, particularly as so many reel from recent cuts to Medicaid and public health.

Congress has the power to check this directive before it is implemented. We implore you and your colleagues to immediately organize hearings to assess the scope of the administration’s envisioned use-of-force policy and its likely diplomatic, economic, and human impacts. We call on you to withhold funding for unauthorized, undebated, and unaccountable military action. And as you exercise your constitutional responsibilities, we urge you to recognize that criminal violence abroad and overdose deaths at home cannot be addressed through military action.

Signed, 

Alianza Americas

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)

Center for Constitutional Rights

Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC)

Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

Center for Gender & Refugee Studies

Center for International Policy Advocacy

Center for Victims of Torture

Church of the Brethren, Office of Peacebuilding and Policy

Church World Service

Common Defense

Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, U.S. Provinces

Demand Progress

Drug Policy Alliance

Free Speech For People

Friends Committee on National Legislation

Illinois Workers in Action

Institute for Policy Studies, Drug Policy Project

Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Military Families Speak Out

Muslims for Just Futures

National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd

National Immigration Law Center

Oregonizers

Pax Christi USA

Peace Action

Public Citizen

Quixote Center

RootsAction

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

SHARE Foundation

The Chamberlain Network

The United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society

Veterans for Peace

Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)

Win Without War

World BEYOND War