The Trump administration announced a ¡°whole-of-government¡± campaign against the International Criminal Court on Monday, after some judges filed a lawsuit alleging the U.S. was punishing and pressuring them over past legal decisions.
The State Department said on Monday it was considering travel bans and revoking visas for ICC officials as well as additional sanctions against the ICC and affiliated organizations because the ¡°unaccountable¡± court posed a threat to U.S. sovereignty.
While the U.S. has historically objected to the court, the announcement comes just weeks after three ICC judges filed a complaint in the Southern District of New York against the administration over sanctions imposed last year, alleging the act was unlawful and retaliatory.
In February 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order authorizing sanctions on ICC officials after the court approved arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza.
That executive order said the court had ¡°engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.¡±
In a video posted on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast the court as a distant ¡°radical and extreme¡± organization staffed by ¡°unelected globalist bureaucrats¡± that could potentially target U.S. border agents, Marines or U.S. counterterrorism officials.
¡°As we speak, the ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country ¡ª not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts and the force of so-called international law,¡± Rubio said.
The ICC was established at The Hague in the Netherlands in 2002 to ensure that genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression did not go unpunished. The court steps in only when states are unable or unwilling to do so themselves, and was meant as a permanent replacement for ad hoc tribunals.
The U.S. is not a member of the ICC and has objected to the court¡¯s ability to exercise power over nonmember state nationals for decades. Still, the country has cooperated with the ICC on numerous cases in the past.
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