A federal judge in the United States has ordered the Administration of Donald Trump to submit a memorandum from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that legally supports the controversial airstrikes by the Pentagon against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and in the eastern waters of the Pacific Ocean. These operations, initiated in September 2025, have been denounced as extrajudicial executions by representatives of the UN, various NGOs, and several governments, and have resulted to date in more than 230 fatalities.
The judge of the Southern District of New York, Paul Engelmayer, has dismissed two of the three reasons put forward by the White House to keep the document secret and has ordered the Executive to deliver it to the court for a confidential review within a maximum period of two weeks, according to the judicial resolution consulted by Europa Press.
Engelmayer has specifically rejected the arguments based on deliberative process privilege and attorney-client privilege. However, he has chosen not to decide yet whether the presidential communications privilege — which, unlike the previous ones, has constitutional grounding — could justify keeping the memorandum from being made public.
The ruling responds to the lawsuit filed in 2025 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), its New York chapter, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. These organizations are demanding the disclosure of the aforementioned report, a memorandum of more than 40 pages from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice that details the legal criteria used to justify such operations, according to what the newspaper "The New York Times" has published.
Following Engelmayer's pronouncement, the Trump Administration must "make the OLC memorandum available to the Court for its closed-door review."
The bombing campaign in the Caribbean and in the eastern Pacific, which the Trump Administration presents as a legitimate tool in the fight against drug trafficking, has been described as an extensive series of extrajudicial executions by various authorities. Among them are the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Saul, non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch, and governments like those of Cuba and Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro.