Families of Men Killed in Boat Strike Sue U.S.
Late last month, families of two Trinidadian men killed in a boat strike off the coast of Venezuela on October 14, 2025 sued the U.S. in federal court in Massachusetts. The Trump administration has carried out approximately three dozen such strikes since September. The suit is the first filed in the U.S. over the extrajudicial killings.
Their court papers allege violations of the Death on the High Seas Act, a 1920 law that makes the U.S. government liable if its agents engage in negligence that results in wrongful death more than 3 miles off American shores. A second claim alleges violations of the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign citizens to sue over human rights violations such as deaths that occurred outside an armed conflict, with no judicial process.
NPR has the story.