He survived a US military boat strike. Despite a drug record, his family says he’s a fisherman caught in Trump’s war at sea
Santa Elena Province, Ecuador (CNN) — The last time Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila’s sister heard from him was about a year ago when he told her he was heading out to fish for work, she said. Last week, she was shocked to learn that her brother was aboard an alleged drug vessel that was struck by the US military.
Tufiño Chila, 41, was one of two people who survived last week’s strike in the Caribbean, which President Donald Trump said was carried out against a “drug-carrying submarine” navigating toward the United States. Two others were killed.
Tufiño Chila and the other survivor were later returned by the US to their countries of origin, Trump said, describing them as “terrorists.”
“No, no … He’s not. He’s not a criminal,” Tufiño Chila’s sister, who asked for her name to not be published out of fear for her safety, told CNN from a small coastal town two hours from the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil.
She claims to know nothing of her brother’s alleged involvement with drug trafficking and instead portrayed him as a desperate father trying to provide for his six kids. Tufiño Chila’s wife left him and took the children, but he still sent them money, his sister said.
“He’s very happy, fun,” she said of her brother. “He’s everything I loved most.”
She still hasn’t heard from her brother since he was released by Ecuadorian authorities this week after returning home.
Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office said Monday that authorities have no information that Tufiño Chila committed a crime in Ecuadorian territory. But he has a criminal record in the US: Court documents show that he was arrested, convicted and jailed in 2020 for smuggling drugs off Mexico’s coast before being deported.
Tufiño Chila’s sister said two other brothers were arrested months earlier, also on drug smuggling charges. Both are in custody: one is in the US, the other is in Ecuador.
Pacific transit route
The family’sexperience illustrates how Ecuador has become a critical route in the cocaine trade. About 70% of the world’s cocaine supply passes from Colombia and Peru through its shores, Ecuador’s president says.
Drug runners often transport narcotics through a large stretch of water on the Pacific Ocean and drop them off in Mexico, where they’re subsequently smuggled into the US or Europe.
The drug trafficking trade is hard to escape in Tufiño Chila’s town, according to those who live there.
“Life is complicated. It’s hard,” one man tells CNN of fishermen’s financial struggles, where monthly wages can be as little as $100.
Becoming a drug runner is an enticing prospect when one can make tens of thousands of dollars up front, according to another fisherman who spoke to CNN in March from Manta, an Ecuadorian city on the Pacific coast.
The profession has also found itself at the crosshairs of the Trump administration. On Tuesday, the US expanded its military campaign of attacking boats it suspected of illegal drug running, hitting a vessel in the eastern Pacific.
Both people on board were killed, according to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
It was the eighth known strike by the US military on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel since the start of September. All seven previous strikes had targeted boats in the Caribbean Sea, just north of Venezuela.
To date, at least 34 people have been killed in the US strikes – 32 of them in the Caribbean.
The Trump administration says they’re about saving American lives from drug overdoses. But most US overdose deaths aren’t from cocaine. They’re from fentanyl, largely produced in Mexico and smuggled over the border by land, often by US citizens.
As the US strikes continue, the ones caught in the crossfire are rarely cartel leaders, but the men who take the risk for them. They’re fishermen often seen as expendable by the gangs that hire them.
Tufiño Chila’s sister showed CNN around the house where they lived before her brother went away. His room is kept like a shrine, with a lit candle to honor him and his clothes folded neatly on his bed.
She hopes to speak with her brother soon. For now, she takes comfort in knowing he’s alive.
The-CNN-Wire
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