Families of two missing Trinidad and Tobago men have marked the one-year anniversary of their disappearance by speaking out to demand the US be held accountable for their deaths.
Since last September, the US military has waged a campaign of strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, accusing them of ferrying "narco-terrorists". Critics, however, call the strikes an unlawful campaign of extrajudicial killings.
On Wednesday, the families of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo issued a statement remembering the two men, who they say were killed in a US airstrike on October 14, 2025. The families are pursuing a wrongful death civil lawsuit in Massachusetts with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). They argue Joseph and Samaroo were fishermen and farmers, not drug traffickers.
"The past year has been terrible without Chad in our lives. Chad was the heart of the family. He was loving, generous, thoughtful and always there for us. We all miss him terribly," said Lenore Burnley, Joseph's mother.
"A year on, we are still grieving and still seeking justice for our son's death. We will mourn Chad forever, but we hope this lawsuit will be a step toward justice for him and our family."
Four other people were also killed in the October 14, 2025, attack, when a missile struck the boat as it was returning to Trinidad and Tobago from neighboring Venezuela. The families said Samaroo and Joseph had been working in Venezuela to provide for their families. Both called relatives two days before setting out for the island, and no one has heard from them since.
The boat strike campaign, launched under US President Donald Trump, has killed at least 239 people since September 2025. But the US government has provided scant evidence to back its claim that those on the boats were trafficking drugs, and has not released the victims' identities.
In many cases, from Colombia to Ecuador to Trinidad and Tobago, relatives have come forward to confirm their loved ones were among those killed and that they were fishermen with no ties to drug trafficking.
The family of Colombian fisherman Alejandro Carranza has filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, accusing the Trump administration of violating his right to life when it allegedly bombed his boat on September 15, 2025. The Samaroo and Joseph case was filed in January and is being heard by a US federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.
"Not a day goes by that my family doesn't think about our brother Rishi," said Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo's youngest sister. "Rishi was a good man, loved by his family and community. The past year without him in our lives has been heartbreaking. My brother and our family deserve justice. We will keep fighting for the answers and accountability we deserve."
Legal scholars note that even if those killed had ties to criminal activity, the strikes still constitute extrajudicial killings. Under international law, the use of military force for civilian law enforcement is generally unlawful. Drug trafficking is not considered an act of war, but a civilian crime.
"For a full year, our clients have lived without their loved ones and without justice, in the name of President Trump's lawless killing campaign," said Jeff Stein, a lawyer with the ACLU's National Security Project. The group, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, represents the families in the lawsuit.
"These unlawful strikes at sea have devastated countless families, terrorized communities and made all of us less safe," Stein said. "We will not stop fighting for accountability. We call on leaders in both Congress and the executive branch to finally end this unlawful campaign before anyone else is killed."
