Families of 2 men killed in boat strike sue Trump administration over
attack they call 'unlawful'
[January 28, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER and BEN FINLEY
WASHINGTON (AP) — Families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a
Trump administration boat strike last October sued the federal
government on Tuesday, calling the attack a war crime and part of an
“unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign."
The lawsuit is thought to be the first wrongful death case arising from
the three dozen strikes that the administration has launched since
September on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The
complaint will test the legal justification of the Trump administration
attacks; government officials have defended them as necessary to stem
the flow of drugs into the United States, but many legal experts say
they amount to a brazen violation of the laws of armed conflict.
The complaint echoes many of the frequently articulated concerns about
the boat strikes, noting for instance that they have been carried out
without congressional authorization and at a time when there is no
military conflict between the United States and drug cartels that under
the laws of war could justify the lethal attacks.
“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal
justification. 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 says.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement that
the 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,” Kelly stated.
The lawsuit was filed by the mother of Chad Joseph and the sister of
Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who were among six people
killed in the Oct. 14 missile strike on a boat traveling from Venezuela
to Trinidad. The men were not members of any drug cartel, the lawsuit
says, but had instead been fishing in the waters off the Venezuelan
coast and were returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago.
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The two had caught a ride home to Las Cuevas, a fishing community
where they were from, on a small boat targeted in a strike announced
on Truth Social by President Donald Trump.
“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
says.
The lawsuit is the first to challenge the legality of the boat
strikes in court, according to Jen Nessel, a spokesperson for the
Center for Constitutional Rights, whose lawyers are part of a team
of attorneys that filed the case. Nessel said in an email that the
center also has a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the
release of the legal justification for the strikes.
Jeffrey Stein, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union,
which also filed the lawsuit, told reporters Tuesday that the
lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages that can be
determined after a trial.
“We don’t think that it’s something that we could put a precise
dollar amount on,” Stein said. “But we’re seeking damages that can
go some way towards bringing justice for these really heinous abuses
of power.”
The lawsuit also aims to prevent more boat strikes, Stein said, with
the hope that a U.S. court rejects the Trump administration’s
"frankly absurd claims about its authority to engage in these
illegal strikes.”
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Massachusetts. It cites
the Death on the High Seas Act, which the lawyers say permits
wrongful death cases in situations like this, as well as the Alien
Tort Statute, which permits foreign nationals to sue in federal
court for alleged human rights violations.
The death toll from the boat strikes is now up to at least 126
people, with the inclusion of those presumed dead after being lost
at sea, the U.S. military confirmed Monday. The figure includes 116
people who were killed immediately in at least 36 attacks carried
out since early September, with 10 others believed dead because
searchers did not locate them following a strike.
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