By News Americas Staff Writer

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Sept. 21, 2026: The US military strikes in the Caribbean have now passed 231 killings, with the latest lethal strike on September 19th that killed four more people it described as “narco-terrorists,” according to U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).

SOUTHCOM said Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed the strike on a “go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean,” adding that “confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking.” The military released video showing the vessel exploding into a fireball, according to Fox News.

The strike is the latest in a year-long campaign by the Trump administration targeting vessels it says are linked to cartel trafficking networks in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. SOUTHCOM said it carried out a separate strike on September 9th that killed three people. With Saturday’s operation, the campaign has now resulted in at least 231 deaths across at least 69 reported strikes over roughly the past year, per Fox News’ reporting on SOUTHCOM figures.

Many of the recent strikes highlighted by SOUTHCOM have targeted vessels the military says are tied to Los Choneros, which it describes as a violent “narco-terrorist” organization.

None of the individuals killed in these strikes have been publicly identified, and none were brought before a court. The campaign has drawn scrutiny from legal scholars and human rights organizations, who have raised due-process concerns about lethal strikes carried out against suspected traffickers without trial or independent verification of the intelligence involved – concerns the administration has not directly addressed in its public statements on the strikes.

The Caribbean has long served as a transit corridor for drug trafficking routes between South America and the United States, a reality that has shaped U.S. military posture and diplomatic relations across the region for decades.

“For a year now, the Trump administration has engaged in a terrifying, lawless killing campaign at sea and has yet to provide the public with anything beyond the most threadbare justifications,” said Jeff Stein, staff attorney with ACLU’s National Security Project on Sept. 2nd, the one-year anniversary of the Trump administration’s bombing campaign of private boats in international waters. “These strikes have devastated countless families, terrified communities, and, by the administration’s own admission, failed to achieve their purported goal of stopping drugs from entering into the United States. We urge leaders in both Congress and the executive branch to put an immediate end to these strikes before anyone else is killed.”

The ACLU has also called on international human rights bodies, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to investigate the strikes and hold the perpetrators accountable.

“The international community must do everything in its power to hold the Trump administration responsible for these extrajudicial killings that are blatant violations of international law,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU’s Human Rights Program. “No other country should provide any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful U.S. government killings. We call for independent international investigation into this lawless campaign.”

The Trump administration has claimed, without proof, that these military strikes are targeting unnamed drug cartels. But neither domestic nor international law authorizes the use of military force against such criminal organizations. The strikes are thus premediated killings of civilians outside of armed conflict, constituting murders under domestic law and extrajudicial killings under international human rights law. Nonetheless, a secret Trump administration legal memorandum reportedly blesses the strikes as lawful and purports to immunize personnel who authorized and carried out the strikes from future criminal prosecution. Along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”) and the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU is suing for the immediate release of this memorandum.

NewsAmericasNow will continue to track developments in this campaign as they affect the Caribbean region.

By Felicia J. Persaud

News Americas, NY, NY, Sun. Sept. 20, 2026: For 12 years, I fought to make Caribbean immigrants and those of Caribbean ancestry count in the United States Census. But after reading the Trump administration’s sweeping proposals to reshape the 2030 US Census, I realized the question confronting America today is much bigger than the Caribbean immigrant community.

The U.S. Census Bureau has proposed changes to the rules governing who would be included in the population used to apportion the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The proposed residence criteria could exclude undocumented immigrants and certain other noncitizens whose status is not considered sufficiently permanent.

At the same time, the administration has proposed prohibiting the collection of race and ethnicity information on the decennial enumeration questionnaire, along with questions concerning sexual orientation. One proposal changes who counts for congressional apportionment. The other changes what the government would know about many of the people who are counted.

The Bureau’s proposed residence rule argues that certain foreign citizens lack a sufficient connection to the United States to establish “usual residence” for apportionment purposes. These are proposals, not final rules, and substantial legal challenges could follow if they are adopted. But their direction should concern anyone who understands what Census data mean.

I certainly do. For 12 years, through CaribID, I fought to convince Caribbean immigrants and Caribbean Americans that being properly counted mattered. Simply checking “Black” did not tell America who we are. We are Guyanese, Jamaican, Haitian, Trinidadian, Barbadian, Grenadian, Vincentian, St. Lucian, Dominican and much more. We are people of different races and backgrounds connected by one region and a shared Caribbean culture.

After years of advocacy by communities across America, the 2020 Census made significant progress. For the first time in decennial Census history, the Black or African American race question included a write-in area that allowed respondents to provide detailed identities, with examples including Jamaican and Haitian.

The result was significant. The Census Bureau was able to publish data for 62 detailed Black or African American groups, including Caribbean identities such as Jamaican, Haitian and Grenadian. Nearly two-thirds of Black respondents provided a detailed response to the race question.

That is what better data can accomplish. And this was never simply about ethnic pride.

Data is power.

Census population data determine congressional representation and play a major role in redistricting, government planning, civil-rights enforcement and decisions involving public resources. When immigrants and Black communities become less visible in detailed data, our children do not disappear from schools. Our elderly do not disappear from hospitals. Our families do not disappear from neighborhoods.

What becomes harder to see is precisely who is there. And now there is an even larger issue.

The proposed residence rules could exclude not only undocumented immigrants from the population used for congressional apportionment, but also some immigrants who are lawfully present yet do not have permanent resident status. Think about what that means.

A person could live in Florida, Texas, California or New York. They could rent an apartment, buy groceries, send children to school, travel on local roads and contribute to the economic life of their community.

Yet under the proposed approach, that person may not be included when determining the state’s representation in Congress. At the same time, the federal government is considering collecting less information about the racial and ethnic identities of the people who are counted.

That would mark a major change in the nation’s demographic data collection. Race has been recorded in some form since the first U.S. Census in 1790. More recently, the Census Bureau spent years researching ways to allow Americans to more accurately describe increasingly complex racial and ethnic identities.

The Bureau’s own work following the 2020 Census demonstrated the value of that detail, producing data on nearly 1,500 racial and ethnic groups, tribes and villages.

Now America is considering moving in a different direction. To be clear, removing race and ethnicity questions from the decennial Census would not make all federal race and ethnicity data disappear. The Census Bureau also collects demographic information through the American Community Survey and other programs.

But the philosophical question remains: after decades spent improving America’s ability to understand the people who comprise this nation, why would we now choose to know less?

There is also a constitutional question that is certain to loom over this debate. The 14th Amendment says representatives are to be apportioned among the states according to their respective numbers, “counting the whole number of persons in each State.” How the courts would apply that language to any final 2030 Census rules remains to be seen.

For 12 years, I told Caribbean immigrants and Caribbean Americans: “Stand Up and Be Counted.”

I believed then, as I do now, that visibility matters. But this fight is no longer simply about whether a Jamaican, Haitian, Guyanese or Trinidadian can be seen in America’s demographic portrait. It is about something much more fundamental.

Who gets to count as America?

The 2030 Census is still four years away. These proposals are not final, and the debate is only beginning. But communities should pay attention now. Because when America debates whether millions of people who actually live here should count toward political representation, while also questioning whether the identities of those who do count are worth recording, we are no longer simply debating boxes on a Census form.

We are debating who America chooses to see.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of  NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Carib ID Welcomes Ruling On Census Extension