Rayshawn Charley stands on a dock in St. Lucia, his heavy eyelids gazing out at the colorful Caribbean fishing boats dotting the bay. The last time he saw his father, fisherman Joseph “Nassie” William, was a week before his disappearance in February.
On February 13, William went fishing with Ricky Joseph, a father of four. Neither returned home. Charlie has lost contact with his father.
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On the same day, the U.S. military released black-and-white footage of a drone attack on a small ship in the Caribbean, killing suspected drug traffickers.
Charlie has doubts about that explanation. He worries that the thin boat was a fishing boat, the one his father was using the day he went missing. His father was not a drug smuggler, he says.
“All I know is that my father was a fisherman and he went out to sea and never came home,” Charlie told Al Jazeera’s “Faultline.” “He’s just an honest fisherman.”
Charlie’s father left behind two children and an elderly mother whom he cared for.
Since September 2, 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration has carried out dozens of bombing raids against unidentified vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing more than 220 people, labeling them as “narco-terrorists.”
No court filings or trials have been filed in any of the cases, nor have there been any public efforts to identify the victims. For families like Charlie’s, all they could imagine was smoke, silence, and the ocean.
Experts say the attack likely amounts to extrajudicial killing, which is illegal under international law.
Fault Lines investigated the cases of three missing fishermen and spoke to their surviving families to provide a means of understanding the human cost of an operation carried out with little transparency or accountability.
Other families contacted by Faultline did not want to speak publicly for fear of repercussions.
Like Charlie, Ricky Joseph’s family tried to contact him but were unable to do so. Other fishermen sent videos of the wreckage to his brother Titus Joseph, which circulated online. Titus knew intuitively whose vessel it belonged to.
“I told him it was my brother who was captaining the boat,” Titus told Fault Lines, calling Joseph his “backbone.”
Ricky often supported his family with the thousands of dollars he earned fishing each year, said his partner Lucilia Charles. He was the sole breadwinner and supported his girlfriend and children.
Neither Charlie nor Charles were able to get answers from local authorities or the U.S. government about what happened to their loved ones. Both said they went to the police to file a missing person report. There was no reply.
Faultline contacted local police in St. Lucia for answers regarding both incidents, but did not receive a response. He also approached St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Philippe J. Pierre about the fisherman’s disappearance.
“We still consider this a missing person case, and our law enforcement agencies are doing everything they can to determine what happened. But as far as we are concerned, the United States has not given us any information about this case,” Pierre said.
What makes Joseph and William’s case unique is that police have preserved the remains of their boat. This is one of the few pieces of physical evidence preserved from a US airstrike.
Folt-Lines could see the remains directly behind the police building, where weeds had been growing for months. The team also tracked down the owner of the boat to see if it was the boat Joseph and William were on.
Zooty Boat owner Cameron Tailiam said they were able to recover the wreckage of the boat before it sank.
He added that he recognized the boat as his because of its color: green on the outside, black on the bottom and red on the inside.
But experts say justice may be difficult to achieve even with the boat wreckage.
To date, the US government has not released the names of those killed in the boat bombing campaign or provided any public evidence to justify the attacks.
Instead, President Trump has repeatedly argued that ship bombings save lives by stopping illegal drugs from reaching the continental United States. “Every time we knock out a ship, 25,000 American lives are saved,” he said in October, without providing evidence.
In an unpublished memo obtained by US media, President Trump also claimed that the country was in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug lords.
The memo directed the U.S. military to “conduct operations” against such groups, despite the fact that Congress had not authorized such actions.
Amanda Crasing, national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International USA, is skeptical of Trump’s rationale.
“There is no evidence that the people being killed in this operation have the means to cause harm or violence against Americans. They have no intent to invade the United States,” Kreising said.
Margaret Donovan, a former U.S. Army captain and former Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps attorney, also told Fault Lines that she saw no clear legal justification for the boat attack.
“Using deadly force against someone in a military setting requires Congressional authorization or there is an immediate (need for) self-defense,” Donovan said.
In cases of self-defense, “executive authorities can temporarily authorize deadly force, subject to later approval by Congress,” she explained.
However, under international law, drug trafficking is not akin to a military attack. Nor is it understood to justify lethal acts of self-defense.
This is a crime, and authorities have long tackled the problem by seizing boats and arresting suspected traffickers.
But President Trump insists these efforts are ineffective. But experts like Donovan warn that summarily killing someone on the high seas without a trial or due process is illegal.
“From a domestic law perspective, it’s murder. From an international law perspective, it’s a war crime,” Donovan said.
At least two legal challenges have been filed against the boat bombing operation. One of them is led by the families of two Trinidadian men who went missing after the October 14 strike. That lawsuit is being heard in U.S. federal court.
The other concerns Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman who went missing off the coast of La Guajira on September 15, 2025.
In December, Carranza’s family filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging violations of the fishermen’s right to life and due process.
Carranza’s friend, Leonardo Vega, saw a video Trump posted about that day’s walkout and thought it was connected to his disappearance.
“We have no doubts. Time has passed and nothing more was heard about Alejandro,” Vega told Faultlines.
President Trump identified the victims as “narco-terrorists from Venezuela,” but Vega said he knew that was not the case. “We fishermen realized it was a Colombian boat.”
Carranza’s partner, Katerine Hernandez, told Fault Lines that the family initially expected Carranza to have jumped into the water to escape the explosion. As time passed, they waited for his body to be discovered.
“At one point I thought maybe I could recover with a finger or something, but I don’t know. There’s nothing left,” she said.
Hernandez explained that Carranza called his family before setting sail for the last time. She strongly denies the Trump administration’s drug trafficking allegations.
“If he really was a narco-terrorist as claimed, why didn’t they track him down and catch him and prove that he was a narco-terrorist? And if he had been a narco-terrorist, we would have had the money, the property, the inheritance, etc.,” Hernandez said.
Fault Line reached out to the Pentagon, State Department, White House and U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America, to confirm whether Carranza, Joseph and William were killed in the airstrike.
He did not respond to questions about the identity of the deceased.
“All of these decisive strikes were against designated narco-terrorists who bring deadly poison to our nation’s shores,” the White House said in a written statement.
Meanwhile, US Southern Command said it “does not comment on individual incidents involving narco-terrorists killed in kinetic attacks.” He also defended the legality of the boat bombing operation.
“All kinetic attack operations are conducted under strict lawful authority, based on comprehensive intelligence and established targeting criteria,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, the strike continues. On August 23, US Southern Command announced that two people were killed in an attack on a “low-profile ship.” Two days later, another airstrike killed four people. The victims have not been identified in either incident.
For families, the lack of transparency is causing anxiety and sadness. Relatives who suspect that their loved one was murdered are left without official confirmation or a dead body.
Charlie feels that America has taken “a part” of him away. He continues to struggle with his father’s disappearance.
“It’s sad that we don’t have bodies to bury,” Charlie said. “Sometimes I wonder if there is justice.”
