Relatives Sue Trump Administration Over Fatal ‘Drug Boat’ Missile Strike That Killed Two Trinidadian Nationals

Relatives of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a 2025 American missile strike against a small boat traveling off the coast of Venezuela — one that President Trump alleged was part of a “designated terrorist organization conducting narcotrafficking” — have sued the United States government for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing.The American attorneys for Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, accuse the government of killing both men in an October 14 strike as part of what they call “an unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign,” according to the lawsuit.Joseph and Samaroo were among six passengers on a small boat travelling from Venezuela to Trinidad when it was hit in a “lethal kinetic strike” ordered by Mr. Trump and the Defense Secretary, Peter Hegseth. In a social media post, Mr. Trump confirmed “six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike” and released a video of the boat as the missile made impact.At the time, the strike marked the fifth lethal attack the Trump administration launched against alleged drug traffickers it was treating as unlawful combatants. To date, American forces have conducted 36 strikes against alleged drug boats, killing 126 individuals, including a January 23 strike that killed three people. “The United States has not conducted these strikes pursuant to any congressional authorization. Instead, the government has acted unilaterally,” attorneys for the Joseph and Samaroo families claim. The lawsuit invokes two federal statutes — the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute — that entitle family members to sue for wrongful death committed on the high seas and allow foreign plaintiffs to sue in U.S. federal courts for international human rights violations.Attorneys maintain Joseph and Samaroo were “not members of, or affiliated with, drug cartels.” The Trinidadian government also said in a statement that it had “no information” connecting the men to illegal activities or “possession of illegal drugs, guns, or small arms.”Joseph and Samaroo were returning from Venezuela — where both men worked on farms — to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad and Tobago, at the time of the strike, the complaint says. “These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification. 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 complaint reads.The civil lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, marks the first wrongful death lawsuit filed against the government since the drug boat strikes launched in September 2025.

Relatives Sue Trump Administration Over Fatal ‘Drug Boat’ Missile Strike That Killed Two Trinidadian Nationals

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