President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday they would be leading a campaign to dismantle what they say are threats from the International Criminal Court to U.S. sovereignty.
Trump, along with former President George W. Bush and others, have said the ICC should not have the authority to investigate and prosecute Americans and the U.S. has not been a member nation of the group since its founding in 2002.
“For 250 years, Americans have governed ourselves as a free and sovereign people. We choose our own leaders, we determine our own laws. And when we’re accused of a crime, we stand for judgment before a jury of our own peers,” Rubio said in a video statement. “This is the essential and indispensable feature of our form of government. It is the foundation of our shared way of life. But today, powerful people in faraway places want to take that away from us.”
Rubio said the ICC is “waging a war” against the U.S. with the force of “so-called international law.” He called the group “radical and extreme” and said its presence globally has only grown over the last 24 years.
“Today, it threatens every aspect of our political and legal system. Border Patrol agents removing violent criminals from our country, American Marines risking their lives to defend our homeland, prosecutors working to dismantle terrorist plots to attack and kill Americans,” he said. “If we stand idle, all of them would be at the mercy of foreign judges thousands of miles away.”
The administration is arguing that these officials being targeted by the ICC are working on behalf of America’s national interest.
Rubio’s office said in a statement that the ICC previously opened an investigation into U.S. servicemen and intelligence offers and has refused to close the cases.
A State Department official told Reuters that a wide range of options are being considered against the ICC, including travel bans, visas being revoked, increasing the sanctions already in place and putting diplomatic pressure on other nations to withdraw from the group.
The ICC was formed by the international community to prosecute some of the gravest crimes, Rubio explained, including war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
The body involves itself when a state is unwilling to prosecute the crimes itself. While the U.S. isn’t a member, the court can prosecute Americans for alleged crimes committed in a country that is part of the ICC.
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Rubio claimed that the organization has changed. Formed at the turn of the century, he said it was marketed as a “narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes.” Now, it looks much different, he argued.
The move was applauded by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who said it was “outstanding.”
“President Trump and Secretary Rubio are right to squash the ICC’s extralegal pretension to authority over American citizens,” Lee said. “Congress should pass the ICC Out of NYC Act I introduced with (Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas) last year and kick them from our shores permanently.”
The ICC has targeted Trump ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the way Israel waged its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Additionally, three ICC judges sued Trump in June over sanctions placed on the group, saying they were unlawful measures. The group hasn’t taken steps to investigate U.S. personnel since around 2020 and 2021 when an investigation was opened in Afghanistan looking at possible crimes by U.S. troops, but ICC’s focus eventually went elsewhere, Reuters reported.
Rubio said in his article that the Afghanistan investigation was “only the opening move” from the ICC, as activist groups have urged the group to take action against deportations during Trump’s second term. He argued that it’s only a matter of time before the group starts to act on its threats.
“The American people never agreed to any of this, and they never will. Read the words of our Declaration of Independence, we fought a revolution against a foreign power transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. Independence is our birthright. We will never let foreign bureaucrats take that away from us,” Rubio said in his video.
In conclusion, Rubio said the Trump administration won’t sit by as the ICC tries to threaten Americans, adding a threat that if they deprive the U.S. of its sovereignty, “we will teach them the full meaning of American resolve.”