Family members of two Trinidadian nationals on Jan. 27 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the United States over a lethal U.S. strike on a boat operating in the Caribbean Sea in October.
U.S. forces destroyed the boat, killing its operators, as part of a campaign of strikes on suspected drug runners that President Donald Trump initiated in September.
The families of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo have claimed they were innocent travelers killed in a case of mistaken identity.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in Massachusetts federal district court, the families of the two men said they had worked on farms in Venezuela and fished off the coastline, and were returning home to nearby Trinidad and Tobago by boat on Oct. 14, when they and four other passengers were killed in a U.S. strike.
The complaint was brought by Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, and Samaroo’s sister, Sallycar Korasingh. They brought their case with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Trump, in an Oct. 14 Truth Social post announcing the strike, said the targeted vessel was “trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known [Designated Terrorist Organization] route.”
According to the complaint, Joseph had worked in farming and fishing in Venezuela through the summer of 2025 and began looking for a way back to Trinidad and Tobago in June or July. The complaint states he called his wife on Oct. 12 to tell her he found a boat ride and expected to be home in a couple of days.
The complaint acknowledges that Samaroo was imprisoned from 2009 until late 2024 “for his participation in a homicide” but had earned early release. By August, he had notified his sister that he was working on a farm in Venezuela.
Like with Joseph, the lawsuit states that Samaroo had called his sister on Oct. 12 to say he was planning to take a boat ride home to Trinidad and Tobago and would return home in a matter of days.
Neither Joseph nor Samaroo were heard from again after they spoke with family members on Oct. 12. Those family members have since concluded that the two men were aboard the boat destroyed by U.S. forces on Oct. 14.
The plaintiffs assert a wrongful death claim under the 1920 Death on the High Seas Act, which allows family members of deceased seafarers to bring wrongful death suits in cases where those seafarers are killed as a result of negligent acts occurring at least three nautical miles beyond U.S. shores.
“These killings were wrongful because they took place outside of armed conflict and in circumstances in which Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were not engaged in activities that presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury, and where there were means other than lethal force that could have reasonably been employed to neutralize any such threat,” the lawsuit reads.
The complaint also argues the Oct. 14 strike was an extrajudicial killing, and that the plaintiffs can seek relief under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute. That statute allows foreign nationals to sue for tort claims in U.S. district courts.
Plaintiffs are seeking damages in an amount to be determined at trial, and any other relief the court may deem appropriate.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the Oct. 14 strike “was conducted against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores.”
“President Trump used his lawful authority to take decisive action against the scourge of illicit narcotics that has resulted in the needless deaths of innocent Americans.”
Since Sept. 2, U.S. forces have conducted strikes targeting drug trafficking on at least 36 boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 116 people.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that the most recent U.S. strike took place in the eastern Pacific on Jan. 23, resulting in the death of two people and initiating search and rescue efforts for a third person.
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