Defense Secretary Hegseth formally named Operation Southern Spear, launching large-scale military campaign without congressional authorization

On November 13, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth formally declared "Operation Southern Spear," giving an official name to a military campaign that had already conducted approximately 20 lethal strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing roughly 80 people. The formal announcement came at a Pentagon press briefing and was accompanied by deployment orders for the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group — the most advanced U.S. aircraft carrier — along with additional naval forces, bringing the total to approximately 12,000 U.S. sailors and Marines in the region. Officials described it as the largest U.S. military buildup in Latin America in generations. Hegseth framed the operation as a campaign to "remove narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere."

The formal declaration was made without any authorization from Congress — no Authorization for the Use of Military Force, no War Powers Resolution notification, and no consultation with congressional leadership. Trump had publicly stated he would not seek a war declaration from Congress. DefenseScoop reported that the operation had already been conducting lethal strikes for weeks before the naming; the formal announcement institutionalized an existing extrajudicial campaign rather than initiating one. Al Jazeera noted that the U.S. "has provided neither evidence nor legal justification for launching lethal attacks" against suspected drug traffickers. Venezuela mobilized 200,000 troops in response to the military buildup. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found only 29% of Americans supported extrajudicial killing of suspected traffickers.

The formal naming of Operation Southern Spear transformed a series of unacknowledged lethal strikes into a declared, institutionalized military campaign — one the executive branch asserted the authority to conduct entirely without Congress.