These shocking acts show Trump thinks he can kill whoever he wants

Actions now being taken by Donald Trump and his regime may seem far-removed from your daily life or the lives of people you care about. But they’re not.

The U.S. military has attacked three boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of smuggling drugs, killing at least 17 people.

Why should you worry?

Because Trump’s claims that the Constitution gives him the right to kill anyone he believes to be transporting drugs into the United States could be used to justify murdering you or your loved ones.

No judge or jury found that these 17 people did anything illegal. We’re taking Trump’s word for it that they were smuggling drugs into the United States.

We don’t know for sure that they were foreign nationals; they could have been Americans. Hell, we don’t even know that the number was 17; it could have been far more.

What if Trump decides you’re involved in transporting drugs into the United States? Or he doesn’t like you and wants to get rid of you, and uses this as an excuse?

Let me put this as directly as I can. The current occupant of the Oval Office is a thin-skinned sociopath who cannot tolerate criticism and who lies like most people breathe. Do you trust him with the power to murder anyone he says is transporting drugs to America?

It’s much the same with grabbing people from their homes who are legally in the United States and then whisking them off to prison because they’ve engaged in speech that Trump doesn’t like.

This is what happened to Mahmoud Khalil, who graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December, who was in the United States legally on a green card as well as a student visa, and whose wife is an American citizen.

On March 8, immigration agents appeared at Khalil’s apartment building and told him he was being detained. They then revoked Khalil’s green card and student visa and held him at a Louisiana detention facility for 104 days before a federal judge ordered him released.

Khalil has never been charged with a crime. (In September, a Louisiana judge ordered him to be deported to either Syria or Algeria for allegedly failing to disclose information on his green card application. That decision is being appealed.)

Khalil was one of the leaders of last year’s peaceful pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. He expressed his political point of view nonviolently and non-threateningly. That’s supposed to be permitted — dare I say even encouraged? — in a democracy.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump conceded Khalil was snatched up and sent off because of his politics.

“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”

Nearly 13 million people in the United States hold green cards. Tens of thousands more are here temporarily as foreign students and professors. All are now in danger of being arrested if they speak their minds.

I am not blaming the ICE agents who are merely carrying out Trump’s “crackdown,” and there is absolutely no justification for political violence targeted at them or at anyone else.

My point is that, if you accept the legality of what is happening, nothing can stop Trump from arresting you or someone you care about for supporting any cause Trump doesn’t like — such as, say, replacing Republicans in Congress in 2026 and putting a Democrat in the White House in 2028.

I say this not to frighten you but to warn you of the implications of what is occurring.

Trump’s bombing of three ships — killing at least 17 civilians — on the basis of unproven allegations that they were sending drugs into the United States, and his ICE raids arresting permanent residents on the basis of unproven allegations they are engaged in “anti-American activity,” endangers every one of us.

It’s not just that Trump is nuts. It’s that he’s unilaterally acting as judge and jury in deciding who’s guilty of actions that are being punished with deportation, prison, or murder.

These moves personally and directly threaten the freedoms you and I take for granted. We must resist them. October 18 provides one opportunity (see here).

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
• Robert Reich's new memoir,Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.