WASHINGTON — Family members of two Trinidadian men who were killed in a U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in October sued the U.S. government Tuesday, accusing it of wrongful death and extrajudicial killings.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind to be filed against the Trump administration in federal court over its military campaign against alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, were killed in the U.S. military strike Oct. 14 while they were on a boat traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad, their family members allege in the lawsuit. The lawsuit says Joseph and Samaroo “had been fishing in waters off the Venezuelan coast and working on farms in Venezuela.” It says they were returning to their homes in Las Cuevas in Trinidad and Tobago when their boat was struck.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump said the strike killed all six men on the boat. Trump described them as “six male narcoterrorists” and said that the boat was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” and that it “was trafficking narcotics.” The strike was the administration’s fifth in a campaign that has struck three dozen boats and killed at least 125 people, according to the Defense Department, since it began in early September.
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the Pentagon said in a statement, “Per longstanding department policy, we don’t comment on ongoing litigation.”
NBC News asked the White House for comment on the lawsuit.
The families were not notified that their loved ones had been killed, but both held memorial services after they learned of the Oct. 14 strike and after Joseph and Samaroo were not heard from again, according to the lawsuit.
Joseph’s mother and Samaroo’s sister are suing the U.S. government on behalf of the two men’s surviving family members. The lawsuit was filed by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union; the Center for Constitutional Rights; Jonathan Hafetz, a professor at Seton Hall Law School; and the ACLU of Massachusetts.
It says the Oct. 14 airstrike violated two federal statutes: the Death on the High Seas Act, which allows family members to sue over wrongful deaths that occur more than 3 nautical miles from the U.S., and the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign nationals to sue in federal court over violations of international law.
The Trump administration has told members of Congress that the U.S. is in a non-international armed conflict with drug cartels, citing that as justification for using lethal military force against alleged drug boats.
The lawsuit challenges that justification. It says that there is no armed conflict and that therefore the laws of war do not apply.
“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification,” the lawsuit says. “Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command.”
The lawsuit quotes the Trinidadian government as saying that “the government has no information linking Joseph or Samaroo to illegal activities” and that it had “no information of the victims of U.S. strikes being in possession of illegal drugs, guns, or small arms.”
Joseph’s mother and Samaroo’s sister say in the lawsuit that the two men were the primary breadwinners for their families and were simply returning home from working in Venezuela when they were killed.
According to the lawsuit, Joseph lived in Las Cuevas, Trinidad, with his common-law wife and their three minor children, but he often traveled the 20 nautical miles to Venezuela for work. He would sometimes stay in Venezuela for weeks or even months, and during this trip he had been working there since April, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says that in the weeks before he was killed, Joseph had struggled to find a boat in Venezuela to take him back to Trinidad. It says he became increasingly fearful of making the trip home after the Trump administration began its boat strikes campaign.
The lawsuit says that Joseph called his wife and mother daily and that his last call to them was Oct. 12 to tell them he had found a ride back home, but he never returned.
“Chad was a loving and caring son who was always there for me, for his wife and children, and for our whole family. I miss him terribly. We all do,” Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, said in a statement. “We know this lawsuit won’t bring Chad back to us, but we’re trusting God to carry us through this, and we hope that speaking out will help get us some truth and closure.”
Samaroo worked in construction before he spent 15 years in prison for his participation in a homicide, and he also frequently traveled to Venezuela for work in construction and farming, according to the lawsuit. He shared photos of the farm he was working on with his sister before he died, the lawsuit says.
“Rishi used to call our family almost every day and then one day he disappeared, and we never heard from him again,” Sallycar Korasingh, Rishi Samaroo’s sister, said in a statement.
“Rishi was a hardworking man who paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again and to make a decent living in Venezuela to help provide for his family,” she said. “If the U.S. government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him. They must be held accountable.”
