WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday the US is barring all transactions with the International Criminal Court and told America’s allies he expects their help in reining in the “rogue” body.
Rubio declared in a statement the US was moving to cripple the court’s economic reach for threatening to bring cases against American troops, border agents and politicians.
“For decades now, both Republicans and Democrats have rejected the idea that the International Criminal Court has any power to prosecute American citizens, to prosecute military servicemembers, or political leaders because America never joined the court,” Rubio said in a video posted on X.
“We don’t need that court. And we don’t want it,” he added. “But now, globalist experts that are an ocean away — they don’t care what you think — they want the International Criminal Court to do more, including the prosecution of American citizens and service members that are defending their country.
“They want to prosecute Border Patrol agents that are protecting our nation’s borders, and they want to prosecute our elected leaders that are ensuring our national security.
“They want more power, and they want it at the expense of our sovereignty as a nation. And President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans,” he also said.
“Our message is clear,” Rubio concluded, “the United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC. Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all.
“Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC. And we expect our allies — many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense — to rein in this rogue court. If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, piece by piece, until Americans are threatened no longer. “
ICC deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told Reuters in a statement that the US sanctions “must be condemned” and “are intended to undermine the rule of law internationally and the work that an independent judicial institution is doing.”
“Our work will continue across all our situations, our investigations and our prosecutions,” Khan said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the move “unfortunate and short-sighted.”
“Instead of lowering prices for Americans, the Trump Administration is further isolating the U.S. and making it harder to bring perpetrators of atrocities to justice for victims in places like Ukraine and Darfur,” she posted on X.
Earlier Friday, ex-ICC judge Navanethem Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”
On Wednesday, Rubio delivered a speech in Athens, Greece, in which he called on Western nations to join the US in “the unapologetic pursuit of national power” over global bureaucratic bodies.
The US refused to sign on to the 2002 Rome Statute that created the ICC — unlike the UK, Canada, Australia and most European nations — with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress objecting to the court’s ability to infringe on America’s sovereignty.
President Trump first slapped sanctions on Karim Khan, then a prosecutor at the ICC, in February 2025 after he threatened to jail Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.
In 2020, ICC investigators opened an inquiry into American troops allegedly committing war crimes in Afghanistan. The US sanctioned two of the prosecutors involved in that probe under then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Those sanctions were reversed during the Biden administration, but then were reimposed on more than half-a-dozen ICC officials beginning in June 2025 in a bid to get the tribunal to drop the probe.
This past December, a Trump administration official told Reuters that there have also been concerns about the ICC eventually pursuing prosecutions of the 47th president, members of his cabinet or other US officials after a new administration takes office in January 2029.
