GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said he would use “whatever force we need to” to wipe out Mexican drug cartels if he is elected president. During a campaign stop on Thursday in Iowa, a voter asked DeSantis if he would use drone strikes and military force to take out the Mexican drug cartels.
“Yes, I’ve already said that we will,” DeSantis answered. “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.”
“We have the right to hold them accountable, and it’s not just that they happen to come over our border,” he continued. “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.”
DeSantis added that the cartels are “killing tens of thousands of Americans” annually and are akin to a “foreign terrorist organization,” according to The Hill.
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The Mexican cartels are responsible for the trafficking of fentanyl and other deadly opioids. In 2022, over 100,000 Americans died of overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“They’re trafficking people into this country. They’re abusing people, sexual abuse,” DeSantis continued. “It’s really the worst of humanity. I would categorize them as something akin to a foreign terrorist organization. I think that’s what they’ve proven to be.”
DeSantis also said that Mexican authorities have not done enough to fight the cartels. “The Mexican government is not doing what they need to do to help with this, but we said from day one of our border announcement we’d be willing to lean in against them, and we reserve the right to defend the country,” he said.
This is not the first time DeSantis has come out and advocated the use of military force against the drug cartels. In June, the presidential hopeful said that the U.S. should shoot drug smugglers who try breaching the border wall. “If the cartels are cutting through the border wall trying to run product into this country, they’re going to end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision,” DeSantis said at the time.
Notably, in 2019, when then-President Donald Trump suggested that Mexican drug cartels should be designated as terrorist organizations, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for “cooperation,” not “interventionism,” in dealing with the cartels.
DeSantis will be in Iowa on Saturday, where he will attend the State Fair alongside Trump.
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