The families of two Trinidadian men killed in a U.S. military strike in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela in October have filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, saying the attack was “manifestly unlawful.”

Six men traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad were killed in the strike, and the family members suing over the deaths of two of the victims allege that their relatives were fishermen returning from Venezuela to their home in Trinidad when their boat was attacked. The families are suing for civil damages under a federal maritime law.

The U.S. killed six alleged drug traffickers on a boat in international waters near Venezuela, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025.

Chad Joseph and Rishi Samarooo of Trinidad and Tobago were two of the six individuals killed in the strike, according to the suit.

“On October 14, 2025, the United States government authorized and launched a missile strike against a boat carrying six people traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad. The strike killed all six, including Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who had been fishing in waters off the Venezuelan coast and working on farms in Venezuela, and who were returning to their homes in Las Cuevas, in nearby Trinidad and Tobago,” the suit states.

“The October 14 attack was part of an unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign of lethal strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean,” the lawsuit asserts.

Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, and Samaroo’s sister, Sallycar Korasingh, are “seeking compensation for the killing of Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo, for the benefit of their beneficiaries,” the suit notes.

“Through this suit, Ms. Burnley and Ms. Korasingh also demand accountability for U.S. officials’ brazen acts, taken in wanton disregard of the most elementary principles of law and humanity, that took away their loved ones forever.”

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