US lawsuit alleges Trinidadian men were unlawfully killed

A photograph of Las Cuevas fisherman Chad Joseph during a memorial at the Joseph family home in Maracas Village on October 22, 2025. - Photo by Faith Ayoung

The families of two Trinidad and Tobago nationals killed in a US missile strike at sea filed a sweeping wrongful-death lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts, accusing the United States of carrying out unlawful killings during a controversial campaign targeting small boats in the Caribbean.

The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts under admiralty jurisdiction on January 27.

It alleges that a US military strike on October 14, 2025, destroyed a small boat travelling from Venezuela toward Trinidad, killing all six people aboard. Among the dead were Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, residents of Las Cuevas, who their families say were returning home after fishing and farm work in Venezuela.

The plaintiffs—Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, and Samaroo’s sister, Sallycar Korasingh—seek compensation under the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute, arguing that the strike constituted a wrongful death and an extrajudicial killing under international law. The suit also names the United States as defendant under the Suits in Admiralty Act, which waives sovereign immunity for certain maritime claims.

According to the complaint, the October 14 strike was part of what it describes as an “unprecedented” US military campaign that began in early September 2025 and involved 36 armed attacks on boats in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The lawsuit estimates that roughly 125 people were killed in those strikes.

It said US President Donald Trump publicly acknowledged ordering the October 14 attack in a social media post that included video footage of a stationary boat being struck by a munition and engulfed in flames. The plaintiffs allege that neither Joseph nor Samaroo posed any imminent threat and that the boat was civilian in nature.

US officials have defended the strikes as lawful, asserting they are part of a non-international armed conflict against drug cartels operating in the region. The government has cited a still-classified Office of Legal Counsel memorandum said to support that legal theory. But the families’ lawsuit rejects that justification, arguing that drug trafficking does not amount to an armed conflict under the laws of war and that civilians and civilian vessels cannot be targeted absent an immediate threat.

The complaint further alleges that the US government has not publicly identified any cartel linked to the October 14 strike or produced evidence that the boat carried drugs or that those aboard were traffickers. The complaint quoted Foreign Affairs Minister Sean Sobers, stating that local authorities obtained the coordinates of the strike in the Caribbean Sea, but the strikes occurred outside TT’s territorial waters.

Both families describe frantic efforts to locate their loved ones after October 12, the last day either man was heard from, and say phone lines went dead following reports of the strike. With no remains recovered, the families held memorial services later in October and November.

Beyond damages, the lawsuit seeks accountability for senior US officials who authorised the strikes, contending that the killings violated both international humanitarian law and long-standing prohibitions on extrajudicial killings.

“Mr Joseph and Mr Samaroo were two of at least 125 victims of the United States’ 36 lethal military strikes against people on boats since September 2.

“The United States has publicly defended the boat strikes, including the October 14 strike, as lawful. President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and other government officials have asserted—sometimes with reference to an OLC legal memo they have continued to keep secret— that these strikes are part of a non-international armed conflict supposedly involving the United States and unspecified ‘drug cartels.’

“Top administration officials have further claimed that the boats they assert are carrying drugs—as well as the people on board—are thus legitimate military targets in this so-called armed conflict.

“The government has not publicly identified all of the drug cartels with which it claims to be at war, and with respect to nearly all its boat strikes, including the one on October 14, it has not identified any cartel it was purportedly targeting. Nor has the government made public any evidence at all to support its assertions that the boats it has blown up and the people it has killed were members of, or even affiliated with, drug cartels.

“Nor has the government provided any public evidence that targeted boats were, in fact, carrying drugs or that the occupants were trafficking them, let alone that any such drugs were destined for the United States.

“Mr Joseph and Mr Samaroo were not members of, or affiliated with, drug cartels. The Trinidadian government has publicly stated that ‘the government has no information linking Joseph or Samaroo to illegal activities,’ and that it had ‘no information of the victims of US strikes being in possession of illegal drugs, guns, or small arms.

“The government’s own admissions demonstrate that its claims about drug trafficking are dubious, if not fabricated,” the complaint said.

The complaint added, “Regardless of any secret evidence the government claims to have to support its unprecedented legal theory, as a matter of plain fact and settled law, there is no bona fide ‘armed conflict’ between the United States and any purported drug cartels (nor was there one when the United States killed Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo) which could justify the use of military force.

“The government has not claimed that it is involved in an international armed conflict that justifies its recent campaign of boat strikes, nor has it claimed that the boats it has targeted are military vessels controlled by another State.

“The government has claimed that the United States is engaged in such a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. But it is not, because the established conditions for such a conflict are not remotely met. Almost every law-of-war expert agrees.

“With respect to the relevant criteria, first, there is no actual “protracted armed violence” of the kind cognizable under IHL occurring between the United States and any drug cartel. No drug cartel has confronted the United States using military means, such as tanks and other military equipment, in sustained armed clashes.

“And drug cartels do not engage in ‘armed violence’ merely by trafficking drugs. Organised crime—even when it involves violent acts—does not constitute ‘armed violence’ against a State. Organised crime is just that—a crime that, in the United States, is cognisable and punishable by criminal law alone, subject to constitutional constraints including due process of law.”

The complaint said that because the boat strikes did not take place in an armed conflict, the laws of war do not apply.

“Instead, the rules under international human rights law and federal law regulate the government’s strikes. And those rules protect the right to life and prohibit extrajudicial killing. “Thus, under the correct legal framework, the government is barred from using lethal force unless, at the time it is applied, lethal force is a necessary last resort to protect against a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury. Not even the government has claimed that its strikes could meet this standard. As a result, the strikes are illegal. Moreover, even if the strikes had somehow been undertaken within an actual armed conflict, they would still be illegal.

“Neither Mr Joseph nor Mr Samaroo was engaged in activities that presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the United States or anyone at all.

“The United States’ killings of Mr Joseph and Mr Samaroo were unlawful.”