The rightwing Florida governor and 2024 presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has sparked controversy by outlining a hardline border policy of deadly force despite acknowledging that drug traffickers could be difficult to distinguish from migrants crossing into the US.
DeSantis, whose ailing campaign has failed to cut into the lead of the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, said that under his direction as president, US law enforcement on the lookout for drugs would not mistakenly use lethal force on migrants because US agents would have “rules of engagement” similar to police or US forces in war zones like Iraq.
In an NBC interview broadcast on Monday night, the Republican Florida governor was asked about a campaign-trail promise: “If cartels are trying to run product into this country, they’re going to end up stone-cold dead.”
“How do you know you’re using deadly force against the right people?” his interviewer, Dasha Burns, asked.
“Same way a police officer would know,” DeSantis 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.”
Data analysis by Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit, shows police killed at least 1,201 people in the US in 2022.
John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, called DeSantis’s proposal “terrifying”.
“That ‘same way in Iraq’ line is terrifying,” Pfaff wrote. “It’s an open embrace of any sort of false positive rate and the large-scale murder of innocent people. DeSantis really is really being quite openly murderous. (And imputing that same murderous indifference to police, as a compliment.)”
Pfaff also pointed to a 2020 ruling in which conservatives on the US supreme court said the family of a 15-year-old Mexican boy shot dead by a US border patrol agent could not sue, because the shooting was a matter of national security.
In Iraq, between the invasion in 2003 and the large-scale US withdrawal in 2011, American forces were often attacked with bombs either vehicle-borne, remote-controlled or carried or propelled by suicide bombers.
The US defense department puts the US military and civilian death toll between 2003 and 2010 at 4,431. Iraq Body Count, a British non-profit, says 15,162, or 13%, of documented civilian deaths in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 were caused by US-led coalition forces.
As a US navy lawyer, DeSantis deployed to Iraq in 2007, advising special forces. He has touted his military service, also at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, saying it sets him aside from the rest of the Republican field.
But he has struggled to make his mark on the primary, falling further behind Trump despite the former US president’s criminal indictments and other forms of legal jeopardy.
Amid a widely reported campaign reset, the hard-right governor, who has targeted LGBTQ+ rights, the teaching of race in US history and other progressive priorities, also attempted to show a softer side. Joined by his wife, Casey, to discuss their children and life at home, DeSantis told NBC he was “really good” at making waffles, adding that his children “actually do like the eggs”, as well as macaroni and cheese from a box.
With his children, he said, “I’m very even keeled, but if I do raise the voice a little bit, they do, they snap to attention.”
On the campaign trail, DeSantis has faced fierce criticism after using violent imagery, including a promise to “start slitting throats” among federal workers once elected.
Discussing his hardline border policy, DeSantis said his proposal to authorise lethal force against cartels would be “similar to like if you’re in the military.
“You have rules of engagement. Anyone that’s hostile intent or a hostile act, which … cartels are, you know, you would then engage with lethal force.
“I think these cartels are basically foreign terrorist organisations. They are responsible for killing more Americans on an annual basis than any other group or country throughout the entire world. And yet, this is just happening, and it’s happening in communities all across the United States.”
Hardline rhetoric about the border and law enforcement is common among Republican candidates. In office, Trump reportedly wanted to bomb cartel facilities in Mexico but was blocked by aides.
DeSantis continued: “It really hit me when I was down in Arizona. You know, most of the border doesn’t have a wall, of course, but there was parts where there was a wall. And these guys are working on the wall. I’m like, ‘What are you doin’?’ They’re like, ‘We’re repairing the hole the cartels cut through the steel beams.’
“So if you see that happening, and they’ve got the satchel of fentanyl strapped to their back, you use deadly force against them, you lay them out, you will see a change of behaviour. You have to take the fight to the cartels; otherwise we’re going to continue to see Americans dying.”
