One year of Trump's boat strikes: Families of missing fishermen search for answers

Rayshawn Charlery stood on a dock in Saint Lucia, his eyes heavy as he looked out at the colorful fishing boats in the bay. The last time he saw his father, fisherman Joseph “Nathy” William, was a week before he vanished in February.

On Feb. 13, William went fishing with Ricky Joseph, a father of four. Neither ever returned. Charlery has been unable to reach his father since.

The same day, the U.S. military released black-and-white drone footage of an airstrike on a small boat in the Caribbean, saying it had eliminated suspected drug traffickers.

Charlery doubts that explanation. He fears the sleek vessel in the video may have been a fishing boat — specifically, the one his father used on the day he disappeared. His father, he insisted, was no drug smuggler.

“All I know is my father was a fisherman, he went to sea and he never came back home,” Charlery told Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines. “He was just an honest fisherman.”

Charlery's father left behind two children and an elderly mother he had been caring for.

Since Sept. 2, 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump has carried out dozens of bombings targeting unidentified vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing more than 220 people it calls “narcoterrorists.”

In each case, there have been no court records, no trials, and no public effort to identify the victims. For families like Charlery’s, there are only images of smoke, silence, and the sea.

Experts say the strikes likely amount to extrajudicial killings, violating international law.

Fault Lines investigated the cases of three missing fishermen and spoke with their families to shed light on the human cost of a campaign waged with little transparency or accountability.

Other families approached by Fault Lines declined to speak publicly, fearing retaliation.

Like Charlery, Ricky Joseph’s family tried to reach him but got no response. Other fishermen sent Titus Joseph, Ricky’s brother, videos of boat wreckage circulating online. Titus instinctively recognized it as his brother’s boat.

“I said that is the boat my brother was driving,” Titus told Fault Lines, calling Joseph his “backbone.”

Ricky typically supported his family on the few thousand dollars he earned from fishing each year, according to his partner, Lucillia Charles. He was the sole breadwinner, providing for her and their children.

Neither Charlery nor Charles has received answers from local authorities or the U.S. government about what happened to their loved ones. Both said they went to police stations to report the men missing. They got no response.

Fault Lines reached out to local police in Saint Lucia about both cases but received no reply. The team also contacted Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister Philip J Pierre about the fishermen’s disappearances.

“We still consider it a missing persons case and our law enforcement is doing their utmost to determine what happened. But as far as we know, the United States has not given us any information about this case,” Pierre said.

What makes the cases of Joseph and William especially notable is that police have the remains of their boat — one of the few pieces of physical evidence preserved from U.S. strikes.

Fault Lines was able to see the wreckage firsthand, behind a police building, where weeds had grown over it for months. The reporting team also tracked down the boat’s owner to determine whether it was the vessel Joseph and William were on.

Cameron Tayliam, owner of Zouti Boats, said he managed to recover the remains of the boat before it sank.

He added that he recognized the boat by its colors: green on the outside, black on the bottom, and red inside.

But even with the wreckage, experts say justice may be hard to achieve.

So far, the U.S. government has not released the names of those killed in the boat-strike campaign, nor provided any public evidence justifying the attacks.

Instead, Trump has repeatedly claimed the boat strikes save lives by keeping illegal drugs off U.S. shores. “Every boat we destroy, we save 25,000 American lives,” he said in October last year, without offering evidence.

In an unpublished memo obtained by U.S. media, Trump also declared the country is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug trafficking organizations.

The memo directs the U.S. military to “conduct operations” against these groups, even though Congress has not authorized such actions.

Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International USA, is skeptical of Trump’s rationale.

“There is no evidence that the people killed in this campaign had any means to inflict harm or violence on Americans. They had no intention of invading the United States,” Klasing said.

Margaret Donovan, a former U.S. Army captain who served as a lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG), also told Fault Lines that she sees no clear legal basis for the boat strikes.

“To use lethal force against anyone in a military environment, you need congressional authorization or an imminent [need for] self-defense,” Donovan said.

In self-defense cases, she explained, “the executive branch can temporarily authorize lethal force and then must get it confirmed by Congress.”

But under international law, drug trafficking is not akin to a military attack. It is also not understood as grounds for a lethal act of self-defense.

It is a crime, and administrations have long addressed it by intercepting vessels and arresting suspected traffickers.

Trump, however, argues that such interdiction efforts are ineffective. But experts like Donovan warn that summary killing on international waters, without trial or due process, is illegal.

“If you look at it from a domestic legal standpoint, it’s murder. If you look at it from international law, it’s a war crime,” Donovan said.

At least two legal challenges are being mounted against the boat-strike campaign. One is led by the families of two Trinidadian men who disappeared after an Oct. 14 strike. That case is pending in U.S. federal court.

The other involves Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman who went missing off La Guajira on Sept. 15, 2025.

In December, Carranza’s family filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, arguing that the fisherman’s rights to life and a fair trial were violated.

Leonardo Vega, a friend of Carranza, watched a video Trump posted of a strike that day and connected Carranza’s disappearance to the incident.

“We have no doubt about it. Time passes, and we never hear anything about Alejandro again,” Vega told Fault Lines.

Although Trump identified the victims as “Venezuelan narcoterrorists,” Vega said he knows otherwise. “We, the fishermen, recognize it was a Colombian vessel.”

Katerine Hernandez, Carranza’s partner, told Fault Lines the family initially hoped Carranza had jumped overboard to escape the blast. As time went on, they waited for his body to be found.

“At times, I wonder if they could find just a finger or something, but I don’t know. There’s nothing left,” she said.

Hernandez said Carranza had called his family before setting out on his final trip. She forcefully denied the Trump administration’s drug-trafficking allegations.

“If he truly was a drug terrorist, as they say, why didn’t they chase him, capture him and prove he was a drug terrorist? And if he was a drug terrorist, we would have had money, property, an inheritance — something,” Hernandez said.

Fault Lines contacted the Department of Defense, the State Department, the White House, and U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Central and South America, to confirm whether Carranza, Joseph, or William were killed in the strikes.

They did not answer questions about the identities of those killed.

In a written statement, the White House said: “All of these decisive strikes are targeting designated drug traffickers who are bringing deadly poison to our shores.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Southern Command said it “will not comment on individual cases, including narcoterrorists neutralized in strikes.” It also defended the legality of the boat-strike campaign.

“All kinetic operations are conducted under strict legal authority, based on comprehensive intelligence and established targeting criteria,” a spokesperson said.

In the meantime, the strikes continue. On Aug. 23, U.S. Southern Command announced an attack on a “low-profile vessel” that killed two people. Two days later, another strike killed four. No victims were identified in either case.

For families, such a lack of transparency has brought uncertainty and grief. Relatives who suspect their loved ones may have been killed are left without the closure that official confirmation — or a body — could provide.

Charlery feels the United States has taken away “a part” of him. He is still struggling with his father’s disappearance.

“It’s sad not to have a body to bury,” Charlery said. “Sometimes I wonder if there is any justice.”