Families of missing Colombians seek answers after U.S. attacks suspected drug ship

Gazing out at the postcard-perfect fishing bay of Taganga on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, Lizbeth Perez looked terrified as she recalled the moment she last spoke to her uncle on the phone in September.

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

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

The next day, President Donald Trump announced that the United States had launched an attack in international waters that targeted a ship leaving Venezuela and killed three “extremely violent drug cartels and narco-terrorists.”

Ms. Perez has not seen her uncle since. She said his five children miss their father and the family is still anxiously awaiting answers as to whether he was on the ship that was hit during the strike.

“The fact is we didn’t know it was him, we didn’t have any evidence that it was him other than what we saw on the news.”

The United States began cracking down on suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean in September, then expanded the operation to the Pacific. According to a US statement, at least 21 attacks have killed 83 people so far.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the purpose of the operation was to eliminate “narco-terrorists from our hemisphere” and ensure the United States was safe from “the drugs that kill our people.”

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

But the attacks drew condemnation from countries in the region and concerns they violated international law.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the attack, saying there were Colombian citizens on the boat that was hit on September 15, and later claimed that Mr Carranza was among the victims.

In response to his first statement on the killing of a Colombian citizen, the White House said it expected President Petro to “publicly retract his baseless and reprehensible statements.”

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

Mr. Carranza comes from a large family and lives with about 20 relatives in a small house off a dirt road in the fishing village of Guerra.

Earlier this month, oil companies allegedly He said he wanted to help his daughter go to college, so he accepted payment from a drug dealer to transport some drugs to an island when his boat was hit.

“But whether it was fish or cocaine (he was transporting), he was not subject to the death penalty,” Petro said. He accused the United States of “murder” and said he ordered Colombia’s public security forces to suspend intelligence sharing with the United States until the attack was over. His defense secretary later said the president had given “clear instructions to maintain a constant flow of information with international agencies to combat drug trafficking, as is already done”.

Mr Carranza had a criminal record nine years ago for stealing weapons from police, but his family denied the description of him as a drug dealer and said they were traumatized.

“What the president of the United States is doing is not right. He has to prove whether they have (human trafficking),” Lizbeth said.

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

Daniel Kovalik, an American lawyer who works for some of Mr Carranza’s family and is also on President Petro’s staff, said Mr Carranza’s wife and eldest daughter recognized his ship from footage of the strike released by the United States.

He plans to sue the U.S. government on behalf of his family. International law states that military forces are prohibited from killing civilians, even if they are involved in criminal activity, unless they pose an imminent threat of violence.

“Even if you claim that the person you killed was trafficking drugs, you have no right to carry out an extrajudicial killing,” Kovalik said.

“They were small boats… If you truly believe they did something wrong, those people should be arrested, tried in court, convicted and sentenced.”

“By the way, none of them are going to be sentenced to death – it’s not a death sentence.”

The Trump administration told Congress it believed the United States was in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels in the region.

In doing so, it appears to invoke wartime powers, such as killing enemy combatants even if they pose no immediate threat of violence, to justify attacks.

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have said the United States is “under threat” from “terrorist groups” and said drugs have killed thousands of Americans.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said seizures of cocaine, the main drug trafficked and produced in South America, increased by about 18% in 2024 compared with the previous year.

But the main driver of drug deaths in the United States is fentanyl, which is produced and shipped to the United States from Mexico.

Kovalik did not agree with the US self-defense argument, saying that “these ships have never attacked the United States.”

Back in Taganga, the strike worries fishermen such as Juan Assis Tejeda, 81, whose skin is tanned by 70 years of fishing in the Caribbean sun, just like his grandfather and father.

He often fishes off the coast near the Venezuelan border.

He described how he sometimes sees drones flying over them while out fishing, “circling silently, coming back again, and then disappearing.”

Even though he was just fishing, he was now terrified because of the ongoing strikes.

“They can see us at any time and think we’re doing the same thing because sometimes we’re out 60 miles or so looking for tuna.”

He said some fishermen did engage in drug transport because of poverty. He said he had been offered money but declined.

He said he would rather hold on to the little money he made and live a “quiet” life than risk transporting drugs.

Most people in the region don’t think this is just targeting small suspected drug-trafficking vessels, but that the United States also wants to apply military pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to step down — or on his allies, such as the military, to remove him from power.

The United States accuses Maduro of leading a criminal trafficking organization known as the “Cartel de los Soles,” which Maduro strongly denies. The U.S. State Department plans to designate the group as a foreign terrorist organization on Monday.

This has fueled speculation over whether the United States will strike targets on Venezuelan soil.

Trump said the United States “may be having some discussions” with Maduro, and Maduro responded that he was ready to talk “face to face.”

As the United States considers its next move, sleepy fishing villages along the Caribbean coast wonder whether diplomacy or war is coming.