Fishermen work in the Gulf of Paria, an inlet of the Caribbean Sea, on November 06, 2025, in Icacos Point, Trinidad and Tobago. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“We want this case to help stop these killings from taking place again,” said the American lawyer representing the family.
Family members of a Colombian fisherman killed in one of the Trump administration’s illegal strikes on boats in the Caribbean is preparing to take legal action over what they describe as the murder of their loved one.
The New York Timesreported Thursday that the family of Alejandro Carranza “has hired an American lawyer, who said he was preparing a legal claim.”
The lawyer, Dan Kovalik, told the Times that the impending case is important both because “the family deserves compensation for the loss” of Alejandro and, more broadly to stop the Trump administration from killing people with impunity.
“We want this case to help stop these killings from taking place again,” Kovalik said. “This is murder, and it is destroying rule of law.”
The description of Carranza’s killing as murder aligns with the views of United Nations experts and human rights advocates who have characterized the Trump administration’s bombings in international waters as extrajudicial killings. To date, the administration has carried out at least 19 strikes on vessels in international waters, killing an estimated 75-80 people in total.
“I never thought I would lose my father in this way,” said Cheila Carranza, Alejandro’s 14-year-old daughter.
Trump has claimed, without providing any evidence, that the targeted vessels were smuggling drugs to the US. Though his body has yet to be found, Carranza is believed to have been killed in an attack in the Caribbean on September 15, part of the Trump administration’s broader military campaign and buildup in the region that has sparked fears of a direct US war with Venezuela and other nations.
The attack infuriated Colombia President Gustavo Petro, who suspended intelligence cooperation with the US in response and accused the Trump administration of trampling international law.
“If intelligence communications only serve to kill fishermen with missiles, it is not only irrational, but a crime against humanity, insofar as the murder of civilians is systematic,” Petro wrote in a lengthy social media post earlier this week.
“Colombia respects international law and defends it because it is the only wall we have as a human civilization against the barbarism that threatens to take over all of humanity,” he added.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
People take part in a pro-government youth rally in Caracas, Venezuela, November 13, 2025
FEARS grew today of an imminent US attack on Venezuela as the superpower’s biggest warship, the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier, arrived off the South American country’s coast.
Countries rarely in agreement all called for restraint, with Germany and Switzerland saying today they hoped the US and Venezuela could engage in talks, as Russia urged Washington not to take actions that risked destabilising the region.
“I believe it is in everyone’s interest to prevent another war from breaking out,” Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said.
The United States has built up its biggest military force in the Caribbean in decades, and killed at least 70 people in recent weeks in illegal strikes on boats it accuses of smuggling drugs.
On Thursday US Secretary for War Pete Hegseth declared the commencement of “Operation Southern Spear,” which he claimed was aimed at crushing the illegal drug trade. The US accuses Venezuela, without evidence, of masterminding the trafficking of drugs across US borders — a claim many believe is intended to justify a regime change operation against its socialist government. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
A Venezuelan navy patrol boat escorts Panamanian flagged crude oil tanker Yoselin near the El Palito refinery in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela on November 11, 2025. (Photo by Juan Carlos Hernandez/AFP via Getty Images)
“The only reason to move it there is to use it against Venezuela,” said one policy expert of the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford.
White House officials have sought to walk back President Donald Trump’s repeated threats against Venezuela in recent days—even as the Department of Defense has continue to strike boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific—but officials in the South American country on Tuesday took the arrival of a US aircraft carrier in the region seriously despite the administration’s claims that it won’t target Venezuela directly.
As the USS Gerald R. Ford entered waters near Latin America, accompanied by three warships, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said Venezuela’s entire military arsenal had been placed on “full operational readiness,” with President Nicolás Maduro ordering the deployment of nearly 200,000 soldiers.
The government also approved the “massive deployment of ground, aerial, naval, riverine, and missile forces,” López announced.
Venezuela’s military deployment comes weeks after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Ford to relocate from Europe to Latin America following several military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that the Trump administration has claimed are meant to stop drug trafficking out of Venezuela—despite the fact that US intelligence agencies and United Nations experts agree that the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the top cause of drug overdoses in the US.
At least 76 people have been killed in the strikes so far, and the Associated Pressreported last week that the victims have included an out-of-work bus driver and a struggling fisherman—people who in some cases had turned to helping drug traffickers transport cocaine across the Caribbean, but were hardly the high-level “narco-terrorists” that Hegseth and Trump have insisted they’ve killed in the region.
With the carrier strike group entering the Caribbean region, the US now has about 15,000 troops in the area where tensions have escalated since the boat strikes began in September.
Mark Cancian, a senior defense adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Postthat Venezuelan officials had good reason to mobilize forces.
“The only reason to move it there is to use it against Venezuela,” Cancian said of the Ford deployment. “The shot clock has started because this is not an asset they can just keep there indefinitely. They have to use it or move it.”
Since beginning the boat bombings, Trump has signaled the US attacks could move to Venezuela directly, with the Wall Street Journal reporting late last month that the administration was preparing to target “ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips.”
Trump also authorized Central Intelligence Agency operations last month, falsely claiming the country has “emptied” its prisons into the US and again asserting that “we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.”
Democratic senators have introduced two war powers resolutions aimed at stopping the US from striking inside Venezuela and at halting the boat-bombing campaign—but Republicans have voted them down after administration officials assured the caucus that the White House was not currently planning to attack Venezuela.
Maduro said last month that Trump’s actions in the region in recent months amount to attempts at “regime change,” adding that “if Venezuela did not possess oil, gas, gold, fertile land, and water, the imperialists wouldn’t even look at our country.”
Trump himself said publicly in 2023 that if he had won the 2020 presidential election, “we would have taken [Venezuela] over, we would have gotten all that oil.”
Trump: When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil. pic.twitter.com/5q3Jr1j1Ho
On Tuesday, both the United Kingdom and Colombia announced that they were halting intelligence sharing with the US in the region, saying that working with the US as it attacks small vessels in the Caribbean could make the countries complicit in violations of international law.
“All levels of law enforcement intelligence are ordered to suspend communications and other agreements with US security agencies,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said. “This measure will remain in place as long as missile attacks on boats in the Caribbean continue. The fight against drugs must be subordinate to the human rights of the Caribbean people.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Massive march in Caracas, Venezuela on Saturday October 5, 2024 to commemorate the one year anniversary of Israel’s genocide. Photo: Francisco Trias
Palestinian journalist Aseel Saleh reflects on the US attempts to destabilize nations across the world to achieve its interests, focusing on the current threats on Venezuela, a stalworth supporter of the Palestinian cause.
This brutal machine has continued its lethal operations in subsequent periods, even if not directly, by fueling and igniting proxy wars in West Asia, during the Arab revolts, primarily in Syria and Yemen.
Providing Israel with unwavering military support, has also been a central strategy of the bellicose empire, through which it has tightened its grip on the region, since the Zionist state was established in 1948.
Wherever massacres and mass destruction exist, the US is definitely there. This is reminiscent of the words that Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote, decrying the US complicity in the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990).
Despite not apparently having a direct role in the conflict then, the US supplied Israel with aircrafts and cluster bombs, which the latter used to commit horrific war crimes across Lebanon.
Darwish said:
“The US is atop the wall giving each child a cluster-death toy as a gift,
Oh you, the Hiroshima of the Arab lover (Beirut), the US is the plague, and the plague is the US.
We fell asleep, the aircrafts and the US awaken us,
and the US is only for the US,
while this horizon has become a cement for the aerial monster.
We open the sardines can, it gets shelled by canons.
We hide behind the curtains, the building shakes, the doors jump.
The US is behind the door, behind the door is the US.”
From Gaza to Venezuela, the US is still behind the door
The US was, is, and will always be behind the door of any country where it has economic or geopolitical interests. US President Donald Trump has acted like a landlord during his first and second terms, feeling entitled to take over the wealth of whatever nation he chooses, or expand his real estate empire anywhere he finds adequate.
Trump’s avarice has no limits, to an extent that has made his administration not only complicit, but a partner in Israel’s horrendous genocide in the Gaza strip and the deliberate starvation of the population. For him, the killing of over 70,000 Palestinian is insignificant as long as the genocide would make his dream of turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East” true, due to its distinctive seafront on the Mediteranean.
Perceiving Gaza as a great potential for an illusionary real estate project, does not seem to be the only motivation for Trump to support Israel in its genocidal aggression. Media reports indicate that Gaza is rich with offshore natural gas, valued at up to USD 4 billion per year.
Taking over Gaza and its gas reserves will not be possible with the presence of the Palestinian grassroots and resistance groups, who have confronted the Israeli occupation and its US-supported colonial project in the region. Thus, launching a merciless war against the besieged enclave was the only way for the US to achieve these goals.
It is the same imperialist equation when it comes to the US aggression on Venezuela. Although the Trump administration claimed that it is waging a war against the Latin American country due to its alleged involvement in narcotic trafficking in the Caribbean sea, no evidence has been provided to validate the claim.
The US has repeatedly threatened to take military action directly against Venezuela after failing to subjugate the nation, despite imposing a crushing sanctions regime on it for many years. This was followed by unsuccessful bids to ignite infighting and destabilize the country through a US-guided violent opposition led by María Corina Machado.
Israel has implemented a similar strategy to pressure the Palestinian resistance in Gaza to lay down arms and surrender by imposing a stifling siege on the enclave since 2007, 16 years before it launched its two-year genocidal aggression on October 7, 2023. It has also enhanced the division between the two major Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, to undermine unity and spread chaos between Palestinians.
The Palestinian cause is Bolivarian
Both Palestinians and Venezuelans are fully aware that their struggle is the same in its confrontation with US-led Western imperialist hegemony and fascism. A concept which late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had always emphasized not only in words, but with actual continued support to the Palestinian people and their just cause.
“The Bolivarian revolution from day one stood by the side of the Palestinian people in their memorable struggle against the genocidal state of Israel that tramples on, kills and seeks to exterminate the Palestinian people,” Chávez said as he received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Venezuela’s capital Caracas in 2009.
“The struggle for Palestine is a first-order struggle for the homeland of the Liberator (Simón Bolívar) and the Bolivarian revolution.” He added.
Maduro has maintained Chavez’s legacy of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, which he considers as “the most sacred cause of humanity”. It has also been a daily concern of the Venezuelan people, who hold it deep in their heart.
Therefore, it is time for Palestinians, alongside internationalists and all people of conscience, to unite and rally around Venezuela in defense of its independence and sovereignty, because the defeat of one nation by imperialism undermines the will of all other nations.
Late Palestinian resistance leader Fathi Shaqaqi once said: “It is a war of genocide that has been imposed on us, during which it is a shame to fight dispersedly. It is either that we rise up together, or they will eliminate each one of us individually.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
People take part in a pro-government youth rally in Caracas, Venezuela, November 13, 2025
