President Donald Trump claimed Venezuela "has been a very bad actor" in the drug war and threatened escalation while addressing reporters on Wednesday (September 3).

“Venezuela has been a very bad actor,” Trump said in the Oval Office amid his ongoing feud with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro via NBC News.

The United States struck a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela on Tuesday (September 2), which Trump claimed was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, killing 11 people in what served as a rare military operation in the southern Caribbean.

“We have tapes of them speaking,” Trump said via NBC News. “It was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people.”

The United States' perceived goal has been to cease the flow of illegal drugs coming from Venezuela and place pressure on Maduro, forcing him to make rash decisions that could lead to his ousting without having to put American boots on the ground, a source with knowledge of the Trump administration's thinking confirmed to NBC News. A second source confirmed that the administration privately called for plans to intensify pressure on Venezuela prior to the president's public comments, claiming Maduro "had a lot to worry about."

“There’s definitely going to be more to come," the source said while referencing the drug cartel operations being targeted.

A federal appeals court panel ruled that President Donald Trump cannot use the the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportations of people his administration deemed to be members of a Venezuelan gang on Tuesday (September 2), the Associated Press reported. The three-judge 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is among the most conservative federal appeals courts in the United States, sided with immigrant rights lawyers and lower court judges who argued that the 18th-century wartime law wasn't intended to be used against gangs like Tren de Aragua.

“The Trump administration’s use of a wartime statute during peacetime to regulate immigration was rightly shut down by the court. This is a critically important decision reining in the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts," said Lee Gelernt, who argued the case for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Several other individuals designated by the Trump administration as Tren de Aragua members were already deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, prior to reaching a deal to allow more than 250 deported migrants to return to Venezuela. The Alien Enemies Act was previously used three times in U.S. history, during the War of 1812 and both World Wars.

Trump's administration unsuccessfully attempted to argue that courts couldn't second-guess his determination that Tren de Aragua was connected to Venezuela's government and posed a threat to the U.S. The judges ruled 2-1 in favor of the plaintiffs as they "found no invasion or predatory incursion" in the case.

Bill Handel