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A single Justice Department opinion sits at the heart of the Trump administration’s deadliest overseas operation of the past year.
A federal judge in Manhattan has rejected most of the Trump administration’s reasons for keeping secret the legal memo that authorizes a US military campaign to blow up boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
More than 230 people have been killed in the operation since it began last year.
Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York, in a 66-page ruling issued Wednesday, held that the Office of Legal Counsel memorandum underpinning the strikes cannot be withheld as a confidential internal document because the Department of Defense has openly adopted it as binding policy.
The government was given until October 14 to turn the memo over for a confidential in-camera review, meaning the judge will read it behind closed doors before deciding how much of it the public may see.
Using memo as law
Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, found that the Pentagon “has treated the Memo as its effective law and policy governing the boat strikes,” and that officials “have relied exclusively on the OLC Memo as defining the parameters of their authority to undertake these strikes.”
The judge rejected two of the three privileges invoked by the Justice Department, deliberative process privilege and attorney-client privilege.
He left open further proceedings on the administration’s third claim, that the memo is covered by presidential communications privilege.
At least 70 strikes since September 2025
The strikes began in September 2025, after a July 2025 presidential directive authorizing military force against groups the administration has designated as narco-terrorists. The military has carried out at least 70 strikes, first in international waters off Venezuela and later across the eastern Pacific, with roughly 234 reported deaths.
The OLC memo at the center of the case is dated September 2025. It reportedly frames the campaign as part of an armed conflict with drug cartels, treating the killings as lawful acts of war and shielding US personnel from future homicide prosecutions.
The FOIA case
The lawsuit was filed in December 2025 by the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, after the Department of Defense denied their FOIA request for the memo.
The plaintiffs argue a legal opinion used to govern a lethal program cannot be shielded as internal advice.
“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians,” Jeffrey Stein, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement. “Today’s order is a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law.”
Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in the same statement: “No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so.”
What happens next
The in-camera review will let Engelmayer compare the memo against the executive branch’s privilege claims before ruling on public release.
The administration must turn over the document and additional details on who inside the government has accessed it by October 14.
