The US armed forces have for months been carrying out lethal strikes against vessels it says were engaged in drug smuggling in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Now, the families of two men killed in one of those strikes are suing the US government for damages.
Two family members of Trinidadian nationals said to have been killed in a US boat strike in the Caribbean have accused the federal government of engaging in “unlawful” activity.
This case appears to mark the first wrongful-death lawsuit filed in federal court against the Trump administration in response to the strikes. Since September, the US has killed more than 100 people in this campaign.
The lawsuit identified two men, Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, as having been among the six people killed on October 14, 2025. The lawsuit said that a US missile struck their vessel while it was sailing from Venezuela to Trinidad. Joseph and Samaroo were returning home after fishing in waters off the Venezuelan coast and working on farms in the country, the complaint said.
Joseph, 26 at the time of his death, lived in Las Cuevas, Trinidad, per the lawsuit. The filing says that he had tried to return to Trinidad earlier in the summer but was unable to travel after the boat he planned to take experienced engine trouble. He later secured another ride home in October.
Samaroo, 41 at the time of his death and also a resident of Las Cuevas, had been working on a farm in Venezuela after his early release on parole, according to the lawsuit, which says he had previously served 15 years in prison for a homicide conviction.
The attack on the boat “was part of an unprecedented and manifestly unlawful US military campaign,” the suit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, added, calling them “premeditated and intentional killings” that “lack any plausible legal justification.” It argued there’s no situation in which such action would have been acceptable.
At the time of the boat strike, President Donald Trump characterized the six men as “narcoterrorists” and said the boat was “associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks” and was involved in the trafficking of narcotics along a known route.
The lawsuit rejected these claims, saying Joseph and Samaroo weren’t members of or affiliated with drug cartels. The filing further stated that the Trinidadian government has “no information linking Joseph or Samaroo to illegal activities.”
Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, and Samaroo’s sister, Sallycar Korasingh, are named as the plaintiffs in this new lawsuit. The filing invokes the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute, federal laws that allow families to pursue wrongful-death claims arising in international waters and, in some cases, allege violations of international law in US courts.
“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification,” the lawsuit said. “Thus they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command.”
The White House told Business Insider in a request for comment that “The October 14 strike was conducted against narcoterrorists,” and that Trump “used his lawful authority to take decisive action against the scourge of illicit narcotics” coming into the US. The Department of Defense said it does not comment on ongoing litigation as a matter of policy.
Lawmakers, officials, and experts across fields have debated the legality of the US campaign since it began in September. The Trump administration has justified its attacks, saying the targets are people and vessels bringing drugs into the US.
Legal experts, though, have said that the strikes don’t follow the proper protocols for interdicting alleged drug trafficking vessels and have questionable legal backing. Lethal action is not the norm for US counter-narcotics operations. Multiple reports on these operations aimed at stemming the flow of drugs into the US have raised concerns about the violation of the laws of armed conflict.
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