Dead, but Not Worth a Headline - How Trump’s Caribbean War Targets Innocent Fishermen

His name was Chad Joseph, 26 years old, a young fisherman from Trinidad and Tobago. Not a drug lord, not a terrorist, not a soldier. He just wanted to go home - a short boat ride from the Venezuelan coast back to Las Cuevas, the small village where he had grown up. But Chad Joseph never arrived. He was one of six men killed in a U.S. military strike on a “suspected drug vessel.” His mother, Lenore Burnley, last heard from him a week ago on the phone. “He said he would be back soon. Just a few hours of travel.” Since then: silence. No signal, no sign of life. When she learned of his death on Thursday, she broke down. “I don’t want to believe that this is my child,” she said. “Is this really true?”

We have now gathered 18 of the 27 names. We will bring each of these cases before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica. Someone must take responsibility - and if everyone else just watches, then with the limited means available to us we will try to ensure that these dead do not remain unseen.

The U.S. Army has destroyed five boats in recent weeks, allegedly because they were transporting drugs toward the United States. 27 people are dead. Not one has been identified. No photos, no names, no evidence. Only official phrases - “narco-terrorist targets,” “preventive self-defense” - with which the White House justifies the deaths of unknown men. The relatives of Chad Joseph say he was on one of the boats - together with his neighbor Samaroo, also from Trinidad, also missing. An anonymous U.S. Navy report later confirmed that “two men from Trinidad and Tobago” were killed in a “deadly dawn operation” on Wednesday.

But no one wants to take responsibility. Wayne Sturge, the defense minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said his country had no jurisdiction because the attack took place in international waters. He also said he had received no official confirmation. Translated, that means: no one is investigating. No one counts the dead. No one speaks about them. It is the logical result of a war without a name, fought under a flag that supposedly protects the world from drugs. Since September 2, when the Trump administration announced the first strike - eleven dead off the Venezuelan coast - the victims have been only numbers. Eight of them came from the Venezuelan town of San Juan de Unare. Their families posted names, photos, prayers. Hours later everything was deleted. Power outages, house searches, arrests. The Venezuelan government brutally sealed off the town - not out of compassion, but out of fear of angering Washington.

“So far, not even their nationality is confirmed,” said Venezuela’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez on camera. A statement that reveals more about political cowardice than about ignorance. Because along the coast, from Güiria to Carúpano, people have long been telling a different story: fishermen who never returned, boats that went up in flames, families forced to stay silent so they do not disappear as well. Chad Joseph was no isolated case. He is the face of a conflict that has spiraled out of control under Trump’s second term. 10,000 U.S. soldiers, eight warships, a submarine in the Caribbean - officially an “anti-drug offensive,” in reality a show of force against Venezuela. Washington calls it “self-defense.” But under international law it is a war of aggression without mandate, and morally a relapse into a time when a human life counted less than a political narrative.

The government of Trinidad and Tobago remains silent because it feels powerless. The Venezuelan government remains silent because it is afraid. And the White House remains silent because silence is easier than accountability. In a country that protects its borders with weapons but does not acknowledge its guilt, people die between two worlds - fishermen declared smugglers because they happened to be on the wrong sea at the wrong time.

There are no photos of the bodies, no investigations, no apologies. Only a mother in Las Cuevas staring at her phone, waiting for her son to appear online. Chad Joseph is dead. And with him, a piece of truth about America’s new war dies - a war that claims to be waged against drugs but in reality is waged against people without a voice. Because those who cannot defend themselves are simply declared targets in the shadow of power.