Quito, Ecuador - Ecuadorian fishermen who survived the US strikes on boats in Latin America have shared horrific accounts of torture and abuse by American forces.

Ecuadorian fishermen aboard the Don Maca were hauling in their lines off the Galápagos Islands last month when their boat was suddenly attacked by a US drone.

"There was a sudden crash – boom! It came from a drone," crew member Jhonny Sebastián Palacios told The Guardian.

"I ran upstairs and saw the boat destroyed," he said. "The whole ship was stripped bare."

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After the double strike, crew members said they were detained at gunpoint by US troops aboard an American patrol vessel.

Several hours later, the crew was reportedly transferred to a Salvadorian patrol boat and then taken to a military base in El Salvador, where they were questioned. They were then placed in immigration custody and transferred to a United Nations shelter – all while their families desperately sought information on their whereabouts.

"From the moment we arrived on the US patrol boat, they were pointing guns at us, shouting: 'Get in, get in,'" Palacios recalled. "They handcuffed us, put hoods over our heads and pushed us around. We were terrified they were going to kill us."

The traumatic experience has had lasting impacts.

"I get scared in the middle of the night. I can't sleep well. My ears still hurt," Palacios described. "I think that’s it for me. I’m done with fishing. Going back out there is impossible. I thought they were going to kill us."

Other survivors of US boat strikes and family members of victims have shared harrowing stories of pain, loss, and uncertainty.

Roxanna Mero told Drop Site News she had had no contact from her husband, Carlos, since January 19, after La Fiorella, the fishing vessel he captained, was seen in flames.

Carlos told his wife during an emergency call that an "American aircraft, two drones, and a blue patrol ship" had been circling the boat.

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"No search team has been sent out. In Manta, we live with constant military helicopters circling overhead every hour, but none of them have been used to find my husband," Mero said.

The US and Ecuador have conducted joint military operations in an alleged effort to combat drug trafficking – even as Ecuadorian citizens have rejected efforts to boost the US military presence in the country.

Ecuador's right-wing President Daniel Noboa has backed the US boat strikes despite reports that they are injuring and killing everyday fishermen.

More than a dozen Ecuadorian fishermen were found by the Salvadorian coast guard on March 23 – five days after a drone strike on their vessel, La Negra Francisca Duarte II.

The boat's captain, Hernán Flores, described the survivors' experiences as captives on a US-flagged patrol boat, where they were reportedly held at gunpoint while hoods were placed over their heads. The men said they were not given medical attention, were refused food, and were only given one bottle of water.

"A lot of us had wounds all over our bodies from the explosion. One young man was bleeding so much he filled the floor of our lifeboat with blood," Flores recounted to Drop Site News.

Both the La Fiorella and the La Negra Francisca Duarte II had been cleared by Ecuadorian coast guard officers at a checkpoint near the Galápagos shortly before they were attacked.

Since September 2, 2025, the Trump administration has conducted dozens of strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 182 people.

Trump administration officials have said the strikes are targeting people trafficking drugs, without providing any evidence to support those claims.

Family members insist some of those killed were fishermen, and rights groups say the strikes are illegal even if those targeted were, in fact, ferrying drugs.

UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk has urged Washington to investigate the strikes' legality, saying there is "strong evidence" they constitute extrajudicial killings.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued the Trump administration last December for documentation on its legal justification for the boat strikes.

That same month, the family of a Colombian man killed in a strike on a boat in the Caribbean lodged a complaint against the US with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

"All the presidents claim they're fighting drug trafficking and organized crime. But they've never actually done anything. They're just trying to make it look like they are – and instead are mistreating innocent people like us fishermen," Palacios told The Guardian.