US could be forced to release justification for boat strikes on drug traffickers

The administration has yet to say how the strikes on drug smugglers are legal.

The United States could be forced to release legal justification for boat strikes on drug traffickers in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

The Trump administration has said the legal justification cannot be released due to national security implications and has not yet told the American public what the legal rationale is for conducting the boat strikes on what they say are drug traffickers headed to the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer has to first see the document within two weeks, before ruling on whether it can be released to the public through a FOIA lawsuit, he ruled in a 66-page filing on Wednesday.

The ACLU and other groups sued to see the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel memo written in September 2025, which essentially offers the legal justification for the controversial strikes. The government has argued against the release in court filings.

Judge Engelmayer rejected the administration's claims that releasing the document would violate the deliberative process and attorney-client privilege. 

"But the existing record does not permit the court to reliably resolve whether the agencies have waived their right to invoke the third (the presidential communications privilege)," he wrote. "The court accordingly orders the agencies to furnish information to enable it to resolve that question."

The judge also is requiring the DOJ to give a full accounting of who has seen the memo since its inception last year.

"Using [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan] Caine's locution, it would be possible for a commander to 'rigorously follow' the guidance in the Memo without having seen it, if, for example, its essential conclusions had been communicated by other means," according to the judge.

Engelmayer also said the Defense Department general counsel's attestation that the memo is held in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) in his office "raises more questions than answers."

"The fact that a military commander has a 'need to know' the legal parameters of his authority does not make him a presidential adviser," the judge said.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment on the judge's ruling Wednesday.

An attorney for the ACLU said the judge's order on Wednesday "is a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law."

"The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians," ACLU attorney Jeffrey Stein said.