OAN’s Noah Herring
11:58 AM – Friday, August 11, 2023
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Thursday at a campaign stop in Iowa that if elected president, he would be willing to use drone strikes against Mexican drug cartels.
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“We will lean in against the drug cartels. We will absolutely reserve a right — if they’re invading our country and killing our people — we have a right to defend this country,” DeSantis (R-Fla.) said when a voter asked whether he would be willing to use drones against the cartels.
“We have the right to hold them accountable, and it’s not just that they happen to come over our border. And if Mexico’s not going to help us with that, well, then we’re going to have to do what we have to do,” he added.
Many Republicans have called for military action as the crisis at the border has worsened in recent years. Former President Donald Trump deployed more than 5,200 troops to combat the crisis in 2018. President Biden also sent 1,500 soldiers to the border in May to serve administrative and transport roles.
With large numbers of people coming across the border daily, Republicans have become concerned with the type of people who are evading Border Patrol agents. The head of Border Patrol announced last week that they captured four sex offenders, some of whom have committed crimes against children, coming into the United States within a single day.
Mexican authorities have pushed back on the idea of further military action from the U.S. In 2019, when Trump indicated that the Mexican drug cartels should be labeled as terrorist organizations, Mexican President López Obrador called for “cooperation” to handle the cartels, not “interventionism.”
In June, DeSantis endorsed the use of “deadly force” against migrants who are suspected of trafficking drugs. The Florida governor reiterated this policy again Thursday when he spoke to a crowd of supporters in a restaurant.
“We’re authorizing deadly force. They try to break into our country? They will end up stone-cold dead,” he said to a crowd of cheers.
In a recent interview, DeSantis explained how he would distinguish between migrants who are smuggling drugs and migrants who are not.
“Same way a police officer would know,” he said. “Same way somebody operating in Iraq would know. You know, these people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same. You didn’t know who had a bomb strapped to them. So those guys have to make judgments.”
Other Republicans, including Representative Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have also indicated that they would support military involvement on Mexican cartels.
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