Fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago Fear for Their Lives After US Strikes in the Caribbean
Anselm Gibbs / Associated Press
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (October 6, 2025) — On a recent afternoon, Kenrick Modie finished untangling his fishing net in a quiet Caribbean village.
As he slipped into a hammock at his home overlooking the sea, he worried that his life and livelihood could be wiped out by a U.S. military strike.
Modie lives in the Caribbean twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, which is now entangled in a geopolitical face-off between the United States and Venezuela, just 11 miles away.
U.S. President Donald Trump, “is giving instructions to shoot and kill people,” Modie said about recent U.S. military strikes targeting suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean as it bulks up its military presence in the region. “What could we do? We’re just a little dot.”
His concerns heightened after Trump declared in a memo obtained by The Associated Press that the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in the Caribbean, alleging they are trying to bring “deadly poison” to U.S. shores. And on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he had ordered another strike on a small boat he accused of carrying drugs in the waters off Venezuela — the fourth since revelations that Trump told lawmakers he was treating drug traffickers as unlawful combatants.
Meanwhile, Venezuela has accused the U.S. of military buildup and aggression, prompting President Nicolás Maduro to place the country’s military and civilians willing to take up arms on high alert.
Stuck in the middle is Trinidad and Tobago, a nation with a multimillion-dollar fishing industry that employs thousands of fishermen who cast their nets almost daily to sustain themselves and their family.
‘If We Die, We Die’
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has said that drug cartels have contributed to pain and suffering in her country, and she has urged the U.S. to “kill them all violently.”
She also said she is willing to grant the U.S. access to Trinidad and Tobago, if needed, so Americans can defend Guyana from neighboring Venezuela, which has claimed two-thirds of Guyana as its own.
Read the full report online at Associated Press.
