US National Archives Log Drug Smuggling and Enslaved Person Trade

By Harlan Pryce · August 10, 2026

Foreign crews were arrested and cargoes impounded as the government tracked piracy and the trading of enslaved persons in records that stay buried in archival stacks.

The US National Archives catalog entry for the "Law of the Sea Files" functions as a map of an unseen territory. It is not the records themselves, but a scope-and-content description—a high-level summary designed to tell a researcher what they will find if they request the boxes. The entry records a series consisting of reports, correspondence, memorandums, and telegrams. These documents collectively track the government's engagement with international maritime law, a body of law that the public record defines as governing the rights and duties of states in maritime environments, including navigational rights and sea mineral claims.

Passage restrictions

The files cataloged here deal with the friction of boundaries. The entry lists information on "routine shipping and transportation through territorial waters and canals," as well as "navigation and signaling on the high seas and inland waterways." More pointedly, the records cover "passage restrictions on foreign warships and merchant vessels" and the "resolving [of] border disputes and rights of passage through closed seas."

For a radar officer, these descriptions evoke the technical anxiety of the coastline—where a ship's position determines whether it is a guest, a trader, or a trespasser. The catalog notes that the files include "fly over restrictions and air space above territorial waters," expanding the scope from the surface of the water to the atmosphere above it. This is the administrative side of sovereignty, where the "arrest, detention and impoundment of crews and cargoes" is not a matter of impulse, but a matter of "judicial concepts."

Deep sea mining

The scope of the files extends into the depths and the furthest reaches of the globe. According to the catalog, the series contains "national and international regulations governing commercial fishing and deep sea mining." It also covers the "conservation and management of the oceans and its resources," alongside the less benign "pollution and the dumping of waste in the high seas."

The geographic reach is absolute. The files include "exploration and international law in the Antarctica," placing the frozen south under the same regulatory lens as "ports and harbor facilities open to foreign vessels." The records also track the activities of "international organizations involved in oceanographic research," suggesting a crossover between scientific inquiry and legal jurisdiction. The catalog describes these as "basic principles and judicial concepts," the theoretical framework used to justify the actual movement of ships and the claiming of seabed minerals.

June 21, 2023

There is a metadata layer to these files that reveals the shifting nature of archival language. A note attached to the description states that it was "reviewed and revised as part of the NARA reparative description initiative on June 21, 2023." The note explicitly records that the word "slave" was removed from the scope and content note. However, the archive is clear that the "original archival records have not been altered."

The underlying subject matter remains documented in the revised text: "combating piracy, trading of enslaved persons and drug smuggling." This juxtaposition—naval honors and ceremonies listed alongside the trafficking of humans and narcotics—illustrates the breadth of the maritime record. The Law of the Sea is as much about the "provisions of naval honors" as it is about "safety protocols designed to prevent accidents and ship collisions."

Geneva

The diplomatic engine of these files appears to have been centered in Switzerland. The catalog mentions "numerous summaries of proceedings from international Law of the Sea conferences, many of which were held in Geneva." These summaries likely bridge the gap between the "basic principles" of maritime law and the specific "telegram" and "memorandum" traffic handled by the State Department.

The context for these files is scattered across other repositories. The US National Archives lists related entries, including "Simon Lazarus' Law of the Sea Files" (NAID 17408967) and another "Law of the Sea Files" (NAID 27022663). Meanwhile, the NSArchive holds related records, such as a March 30, 2026, case from the United States District Court involving Armando Fernandez-Larios and Charles Parra, as well as a fully redacted March 31, 2025, meeting between the EPA Administrator and "Energy Talking Points."

Other related archival materials include Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) records from the State Department, such as a 1969–1976 telegram to the Embassy in Kuwait and a 1981–1988 letter from Secretary of Defense Carlucci to Secretary of State Shultz regarding global issues.

The catalog entry for NAID 3859203 provides the list, but it does not provide the letters. It identifies that the government discussed the "arrest, detention and impoundment of crews," but it does not name the crews or the dates of their detention. The record describes the existence of the files; the files themselves remain in the stacks.