U.S.:
Murder by Sea

Oct 27, 2025

Drugs kill tens of thousands of people in the U.S.: 80,000 last year and 110,000 in 2023. But Trump cynically played on this horror to falsely justify ordering U.S. troops to kill civilians on boats in the southern Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

U.S. forces murdered 43 people in 10 such attacks between September 2 and October 26, with more murders sure to follow. None of the boats were firing on U.S. forces. They posed no imminent threat to U.S. forces or to people here. The attacks were totally illegal.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the dead were “narco-terrorists.” But terrorists have specific ideologies or religious causes. Drug runners simply try to make money—in places where unemployment is high.

One video shows brown packages in one boat in the eastern Pacific before it was attacked. But the U.S. presented no proof of drug running. Family members of murdered fisherman Alejandro Carranza of Colombia and Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo of Trinidad insist their dead had nothing to do with drugs.

Trump lied, “Each boat carried drugs that could have killed 25,000 people.” But this would mean the U.S. attacks saved 250,000 lives. That’s more than three times the number of U.S. drug deaths last year!

Most U.S. drug deaths are caused by fentanyl from Mexico, which is transported by land, not by sea. Very few drugs are carried to the U.S. by boat in the southern Caribbean at all.

But Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth want bombed bodies. Corpses with limbs blown off by bombs have washed ashore in places like Trinidad. These war casualties are neither autopsied, claimed, or repatriated—just left to rot hundreds of miles from home.

These U.S. war crimes won’t save any Americans’ lives. No doubt these killings are intended to accustom people here to U.S. killings south of the border, near places where there is oil or where the U.S. wants additional control. And the U.S. already has 64 bases in 31 countries in this region.