The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, names the US government as the defendant and seeks compensation for the deaths of Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, both from Las Cuevas in Trinidad and Tobago. According to the complaint, Joseph and Samaroo 'had been fishing in waters off the Venezuelan coast and working on farms in Venezuela' and were heading back to Trinidad when their boat was struck by a missile. The lawsuit claims the men had no links to drug cartels and describes the military operation as illegal and extrajudicial. The lawsuit invokes the Death on the High Seas Act, which allows relatives of people who die in international waters to sue for wrongful death, and the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows foreigners to file civil lawsuits in US courts for violations of international law, including human rights abuses. The case represents the first legal challenge of its kind to President Donald Trump's policy of targeting vessels along drug-trafficking routes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. Trump announced on October 14 via Truth Social that US forces carried out a 'lethal kinetic strike' that killed six men aboard a vessel 'affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting drug trafficking' in international waters off the coast of Venezuela.