Families of two men believed to have been killed in military strike on boat sue US government over ‘unlawful’ attacks

By Haley Britzky, Zachary Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — As the US military began launching strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean last year, a young Trinidadian man who was in Venezuela for work was searching for a way home, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

Chad Joseph, 26, had been in Venezuela for months fishing and doing farm work when he began looking for a boat to hitch a ride back to Las Cuevas in Trinidad and Tobago, where his wife and three children lived. But as the US began targeting vessels officials said were carrying drugs destined for American streets, Joseph “became increasingly fearful” of making the journey, court documents say. The concerns became so real that in early September, his wife recalled, he called to assure her that he had not been aboard a vessel just hit by the US, pledging to be home soon.

The last call home was on October 12, when Joseph told his wife he’d found a boat to bring him back to Trinidad, and he would be seeing her in a matter of days, according to court documents. Two days later, however, on October 14, the US struck another target — a boat Joseph’s family believes he was in.

“Mr. Joseph’s wife repeatedly called Mr. Joseph’s cellphone, but the line was dead,” a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the US government says. “The line remains dead to this day.”

Joseph’s family, and the family of another Trinidadian man, 41-year-old Rishi Samaroo, who had been working with Joseph in Venezuela and who is also believed to have been on the boat, filed a lawsuit against the US government on Tuesday for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing of the two men. The complaint calls the strikes “unprecedented and manifestly unlawful,” and says they have carried out “premeditated and intentional killings” with no legal justification.

CNN asked the Justice Department for comment but did not immediately receive a response before publication. The Defense Department declined to comment on ongoing litigation.

The complaint says that, despite claims by President Donald Trump and other administration officials that all the men killed on board were “narcoterrorists,” neither Joseph nor Samaroo had any affiliation to drug cartels.

The lawsuit marks the first opportunity for a judge to rule on the legality of the strikes which are part of the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific — dubbed Operation Southern Spear — that has killed at least 117 people. The most recent strike was carried out last week in the eastern Pacific, killing two and leaving one survivor who was being searched for by the Coast guard.

The lawsuit points specifically to the Death on the High Seas Act, which allows family members to sue over wrongful deaths on the high seas, and the Alien Tort Statute, which lets foreign nationals sue in federal courts over violations of international law.

The families are suing for compensatory and punitive damages and they are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Jonathan Hafetz with the Seton Hall Law School.

The administration has publicly presented little evidence that those killed in the ongoing campaign are affiliates of drug cartels, or that each of the vessels had drugs on them. When pressed by lawmakers during congressional briefings, military officials have acknowledged they do not know the identities of everyone on board the boats they have destroyed.

The legality of the strikes has come under intense scrutiny in Congress since the operations began in September, including particular interest in the very first strike, when the military carried out a second strike that killed two survivors of an initial attack. Multiple current and former military lawyers previously told CNN the strikes do not appear lawful.

But the administration has maintained that the operation is a necessary step against drugs heading for US shores that will ultimately harm Americans.

Trump announced the October 14 strike in a social media post, saying “six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed” and that intelligence had confirmed the vessel was “trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route.”

‘They must be held accountable’

Similar to Joseph, Samaroo had communicated with his family just days before the October 14 strike. Having served 15 years in prison for “participation in a homicide” in Trinidad, and released early on parole, Samaroo moved to Las Cuevas, Trinidad, and in August 2025 he went to Venezuela to work on a farm, the lawsuit says.

He frequently shared photos and videos with his family of his time on the farm, “where he cared for cows and goats and made cheese.” During one video call, he introduced Joseph, a friend from home who he said he was working with in Venezuela.

On October 12, Samaroo sent his sister, Sallycar Korasingh, a photo in a lifejacket, telling her he had found a boat to bring him back to Trinidad and he would see her in a few days.

“That call was the last time Ms. Korasingh, or anyone else in his family, heard from Mr. Samaroo,” the complaint says.

In a statement issued by the ACLU, Korasingh said her brother was a “hardworking man who paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again.”

“If the US government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him,” she said. “Not murdered him. They must be held accountable.”

Members of the administration have repeatedly insisted that those killed in the strikes are “narcoterrorists” — in November, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on social media that “every trafficker killed is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”

The lawsuit, however, says neither Joseph nor Samaroo were “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 complaint says.

The complaint calls into question one of the primary claims made by Trump administration officials throughout the course of the campaign, that the boats — and the drugs allegedly aboard them — were headed for the US and required urgent military action. The lawsuit says, however, that Joseph and Samaroo were headed home to Trinidad on the vessel targeted by the US.

In the wake of the first strike in September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially said that boat was headed toward Trinidad or elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Last year, the Trump administration justified the operation with a classified legal opinion produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The opinion argues that the president is allowed to authorize deadly force against a broad range of cartels because they pose an imminent threat to Americans.

The opinion appears to justify an open-ended war against a secret list of groups, legal experts have said, giving the president power to designate drug traffickers as enemy combatants and have them killed without legal review. Historically, those involved in drug trafficking were considered criminals with due process rights, with the Coast Guard interdicting drug-trafficking vessels and arresting smugglers.

The lawsuit, however, offers the first opportunity for those who believe the strikes amount to extrajudicial killings to present their case before a judge.

“Whatever that secret memorandum states, it cannot render the patently illegal killings lawful,” the court filing says.

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