Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed new sanctions on the president of the International Criminal Court and a senior trial lawyer Tuesday, deepening a confrontation between the Trump administration and the Hague-based tribunal that has now drawn multiple lawsuits.
The sanctions target ICC President Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national, and Senior Trial Lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, a Senegalese national. Both are now blocked from the U.S. financial system. American citizens and financial institutions are barred from conducting any transactions with them, and any property they hold in U.S. jurisdictions will be frozen.
Rubio framed the move as part of a broader effort to check a court that Washington has never recognized. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the ICC and established its jurisdiction. Yet the court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in the Gaza Strip, and previously opened a probe into American troops' conduct in Afghanistan.
The Hill reported that Rubio issued a statement describing the sanctions as part of "our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court."
In a fuller version of his remarks, Rubio called the ICC "a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate."
"These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction. The ICC has repeatedly attempted to assert authority over nationals of the United States and other countries that have not consented to its jurisdiction or ratified the Rome Statute. This sets a dangerous precedent for all nations."
The statement makes the administration's position plain: the ICC has no lawful authority over Americans or Israelis, and Washington will use every available tool to enforce that view.
Tuesday's sanctions are not an isolated action. Last month, Rubio promised to dismantle the ICC "brick by brick," launching what the State Department described as a whole-of-government campaign. That campaign includes travel bans, visa revocations for ICC personnel, expanded sanctions against the court and affiliated organizations, and diplomatic pressure on other nations to withdraw from the ICC entirely.
Rubio has been active across multiple foreign-policy fronts this year, but the ICC confrontation has become one of the sharpest edges of the administration's sovereignty agenda.
Fox News reported Rubio's warning that the campaign would be "sweeping," adding: "We expect more countries to join our campaign." The sanctions framework itself traces back to an executive order President Trump signed in February 2025, which authorized asset freezes and transaction bans against ICC officials the administration deems a threat to U.S. sovereignty.
The administration had already blacklisted several ICC officials, including prosecutors and judges, before Tuesday's round. The Washington Free Beacon detailed a prior sanctions round that hit four ICC members: Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, French judge Nicolas Guillou, Fijian deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan, and Senegalese deputy prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang. Prost had authorized the ICC's investigation into American military members who served in Afghanistan. Guillou signed off on the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
Rubio described the court bluntly in that earlier round: "The Court is a national security threat that has been an instrument for lawfare against the United States and our close ally Israel."
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu welcomed Tuesday's action. Netanyahu said he "commend[s] Secretary of State Marco Rubio for leading the Trump administration's determined efforts against the ICC's illegitimate overreach."
The ICC, for its part, pushed back sharply. In a statement to The Hill, the court said that "measures targeting judges, prosecutors and staff who work towards the fulfilment of the mandate that was conferred to the ICC by States undermine the rule of law."
"When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk."
The court added that it remains "undeterred and stands firmly behind its personnel and behind victims of unimaginable atrocities," pledging to "continue to fully discharge its mandate with independence and impartiality, in full accordance with the Rome Statute and in the interest of victims of international crimes." An additional official ICC statement was expected early Wednesday.
The ICC's language frames the dispute as a clash between legal order and political power. The administration frames it the opposite way: a foreign tribunal overstepping into the sovereign affairs of nations that never consented to its authority.
The legal fallout is already substantial. Three ICC court judges filed a lawsuit in New York in June against the Trump administration, arguing that the sanctions levied against them are unlawful. In July, two human rights advocacy groups sued to block the sanctions, claiming the designations had a "chilling effect" on their work documenting alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
And just last week, four more human rights groups filed yet another suit, alleging that the administration's sanctions are unlawfully interfering with their international criminal justice work. The names of the groups and judges involved in these cases were not specified in available reporting, and the current status of the three suits remains unclear.
The administration's broader foreign-policy posture, from military escalation in the Middle East to diplomatic confrontations with international institutions, has drawn praise from allies and legal challenges from critics in roughly equal measure.
None of the lawsuits, however, have slowed the pace of new sanctions. Tuesday's designations of Akane and Seye suggest the administration intends to keep escalating until the ICC backs down or other member nations peel away from the court under diplomatic pressure.
The United States has never ratified the Rome Statute. American objections to the ICC predate the Trump administration by decades. Washington has long argued that subjecting U.S. military personnel and officials to a foreign court without Senate-ratified consent violates constitutional principles of sovereignty and due process.
The ICC's decision to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over the Gaza conflict, and its earlier probe into U.S. troops in Afghanistan, crystallized those objections into policy. The administration now accuses the court of unfairly prosecuting American and Israeli soldiers for alleged crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Gaza, a posture that treats the ICC not as a neutral arbiter but as a political actor wielding legal tools against nations that never agreed to its jurisdiction.
Rubio's campaign also extends to diplomatic dealings with allied nations, where the administration has pressed governments under the U.S. security umbrella to reject ICC authority over American officials and service members.
Just The News noted the conflict escalated after the three ICC judges sued the administration in June, a move that appeared to harden rather than soften Washington's approach. The administration responded not with negotiation but with more sanctions.
The pattern is clear. Every legal challenge from the ICC side has been met with a broader sanctions round from Washington. Every condemnation from the court has been answered with sharper language from Rubio. The administration is not looking for a compromise with a court it considers illegitimate, it is looking to project resolve on the world stage.
Whether the ICC can sustain its operations under mounting American financial and diplomatic pressure, or whether member nations begin to fracture under the weight of it, will determine how this standoff ends. But the administration has made its bet: sovereignty is not negotiable, and no foreign court gets a veto over American or allied officials.
A government that won't defend its own people from foreign courts that never had jurisdiction in the first place isn't defending sovereignty at all, it's surrendering it by default.