Family of missing Colombian seeks answers after US attack on suspected drug boat

Lizbeth Perez looks fearful as she looks out over the postcard-perfect fishing bay of Taganga on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, remembering the moment she last spoke to her uncle in September.

“He was a kind man, a good person, a friend. A good father, an uncle son. He was a cheerful person. He loved his work and his fishing.”

Alejandro Carranza said goodbye to his family early in the morning of September 14, before going out on his boat as usual, his cousin Audenis Manjarres told state media. He left from La Guajira, a region in neighboring Venezuela, he said.

The next day, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that a U.S. strike in international waters had targeted a ship that had left Venezuela and that three people he called “extraordinarily violent drug cartels and narcoterrorists” had been killed.

Since then, Ms. Perez has not seen her uncle again. Her five children miss their father, she said, and the family is still anxiously awaiting answers, not knowing if he was even on the boat hit by the strike.

“The truth is we don’t know it was him, we have no proof it was him other than what we saw on the news.”

The United States began striking suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean in September, before expanding its operations to the Pacific. So far, 83 people have been killed in at least 21 strikes, according to US statements.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the campaign aims to eliminate “narcoterrorists from our hemisphere” and protect the United States from “drugs that are killing our people.”

The Trump administration justifies them as a necessary self-defense measure aimed at saving American lives by preventing drugs from entering the United States.

But the strikes have drawn condemnation in regional countries and concerns that they violate international law.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the strikes, saying Colombian citizens were aboard the stricken boat on September 15 and later saying Mr. Carranza was among those killed.

In response to its first statement on the deaths of Colombian citizens, the White House said it looked forward to President Petro “publicly withdrawing his baseless and reprehensible statement.”

Trump also accused Petro of encouraging drug production and threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Colombia.

Mr. Carranza comes from a large family, living with around 20 relatives in a small house located on the side of a dirt road in the fishing village of Gaira.

Earlier this month, Petro claimed he wanted to help his daughter attend college and so had accepted payment from a drug trafficker to transport drugs to an island, when his boat was struck.

“But whether it’s fish or cocaine [he was transporting]“He was not eligible for the death penalty,” Petro said. He accused the United States of “murder” and has since said he ordered Colombian public security forces to suspend intelligence sharing with the United States until the strikes end. His defense minister later said the president had given “clear instructions to maintain, as has been done, a continuous flow of information with international agencies to combat drug trafficking.”

Mr. Carranza has a criminal record for stealing weapons from the police nine years ago, but his family denies – and says they are hurt – the descriptions of drug trafficker.

“What the President of the United States is doing is wrong. He needs to prove whether they are right or not. [trafficking]”, said Lizbeth.

She says that while Trump may want to address issues affecting his “turf,” that “doesn’t mean he should resort to these methods…to take someone’s life.”

A U.S. lawyer working for some members of Mr. Carranza’s family, Daniel Kovalik, who also works for President Petro, says Mr. Carranza’s wife and eldest daughter recognized his boat from footage of the strike broadcast in the United States.

He plans to sue the U.S. government on behalf of the family. International law says the military cannot kill civilians unless they pose an imminent threat of violence, even if they are engaged in criminal activity.

“Even if you claim that the people you kill are trafficking drugs, you have no right to carry out extrajudicial killings,” Mr. Kovalik said.

“These are tiny boats… If you really think they were doing something wrong, these people should be arrested, tried in court, found guilty and sentenced.”

“And besides, none of them would get the death penalty – it’s not a capital crime.”

The Trump administration has told Congress it believes the United States is engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels in the region.

In doing so, it appears to invoke war powers, such as killing enemy combatants even if they do not pose an immediate violent threat, to justify the strikes.

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States was “threatened” by “terrorist organizations” and that drugs were killing thousands of Americans.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says seizures of cocaine – the main drug trafficked and produced in South America – increased by about 18% in 2024 compared to the previous year.

But the biggest culprit in drug deaths in the United States is Fentanyl, which is produced and comes to the United States from Mexico.

Mr. Kovalik does not buy the United States’ self-defense argument, saying that “these boats never attacked the United States.”

Back in Taganga, the strikes are causing apprehension among fishermen like Juan Assis Tejeda, 81, whose skin is tanned and leathery from 70 years of fishing these waters under the scorching Caribbean sun – just like his grandfather and father before him.

He fishes regularly near the border with Venezuela, just along the coast.

He describes how he has sometimes seen drones fly overhead while fishing, which “hover quietly, come back and disappear”.

Even though he only fishes, he is now afraid because of the ongoing strikes.

“At any time they could see us and think we were doing the same thing. Because sometimes we also go about sixty miles offshore looking for tuna.”

He says some fishermen participate in drug transport due to poverty. He says he’s been offered money before, but he said no.

He prefers to stick to the little money he earns and live “in peace” rather than take the risks associated with transporting drugs, he says.

Most people in this region do not believe that this is simply about targeting small boats suspected of drug trafficking, but rather that the United States also wants to exert military pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to step down – or on his allies, for example in the army, to oust him.

The United States accuses Maduro of running a criminal trafficking organization it calls the Cartel de los Soles, which Maduro categorically denies. The US State Department plans to designate the group as a foreign terrorist organization on Monday.

This fueled growing speculation about whether the United States would strike targets on Venezuelan soil itself.

Trump said the United States “could have discussions with Maduro” and Maduro responded by saying he would be willing to talk “face to face.”

As the United States ponders its next move, the sleepy fishing villages that dot the Caribbean coast wonder whether diplomacy or war is on the horizon.